Olympics to offer all Games competitors $17,000 grants

Gasol, a former Spanish basketball star, added that the payment would be “acknowledging the importance and relevance of being an Olympian, participating and representing your sport and to your country in the Games.”

“It’s not prize money,” he stressed. He also said Paralympians would not be eligible.

The IOC said athletes who competed at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games this year would be eligible to apply once the application process had been set up.

President Kirsty Coventry has consistently opposed such a suggestion.

She said that the money for the grants would not cut into the shares of IOC revenue that go to National Olympic Committees or international sports federations.

She said the IOC had decided the US$10,000 figure “was an acceptable amount everywhere that would allow for someone to start something or have it as a little bit of seed money”.

Gasol, a former National Basketball Association star, said NBA players, National Hockey League players and tennis stars would be eligible for the grants.

Coventry’s opposition to prize money has drawn a hostile response from some former athletes.

South African Roland Schoeman, like Coventry, a former swimmer, launched a petition calling for the resignation of the president and the entire executive board.

“The IOC generates billions. That value comes from the athletes. It is time to demand accountability,” he wrote.

World Athletics broke with tradition and introduced prize money at the 2024 Paris Games - each gold medal winner in the 48 track and field events receiving US$50,000 - relay runners sharing the prize pot.

“Does this undermine the amateur ethic?” said World Athletics president Sebastian Coe at the time of the announcement.

“We’re now operating in a completely different planet from when I was competing, so it is very important that the sport recognises that change in landscape.”

The IOC, meanwhile, made several changes to its charter, including a new paragraph emphasising its political neutrality.

“The IOC’s role is: to apply neutrality at all times, free from governmental, cultural, societal or economic pressure,” reads the addition.

Asked if this greater emphasis on staying out of politics was paving the way for the return of Russia to the Olympic movement, Coventry replied that the IOC did not know how the change they had just made would play out.

“We haven’t had much time to then sit down and discuss a way forward. So give us a little bit of time to see now how we’re going to implement,” she said. “So, let us do that and then we’ll come back to you.”

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