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Justin Gatlin has urged the IOC to introduce prize money for Olympic athletes, criticising the lack of financial rewards compared to smaller meets.
American sprint legend Justin Gatlin believes the International Olympic Committee should consider offering prize money to athletes to appreciate the hard work and effort they put in to make the event worthwhile.
The former Olympic 100m champion explained that it is a state of backwardness that other minor meets honour athletes with huge pay cheques but events like the Olympic Games do not award the efforts of the sportsmen.
Justin Gatlin further noted that World Athletics should also consider rising above the normal when it comes to awarding prize money during their events following the rise of other events like the Grand Slam Track league and Alexis Ohanian’s women-only event, Athlos.
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He pointed out the need to award athletes and motivate them to train hard and represent their countries in global championships, revealing that lack of prize money is one of the reasons why most athletes opt to race in other minor meets than the Olympics and World Championships.
“I think our sport is so backwards because we’ve been getting paid more just to run a one-off race in the middle of somewhere in the world compared to running at the Olympics. I feel like if you incentivise people to get a bigger payday at the Olympics or World Championships, it would make people train harder and want to make the teams go out and compete at the higher levels,” Justin Gatlin said on Asafa Powell’s YouTube Channel.
“Now, you are looking at how they run the Olympics like an amateur sport, which is like, ‘Congratulations, you did a great job.’ I train so hard for four years just for this moment to happen and it changes your life to get ready for the moment. if you succeed at that moment, it should be that big,” he added.
This season, World Athletics and the International Boxing Association became the first federations to award its Olympians. World Athletics set aside a total prize pot of US$2.4 million (about Ksh312 million).
The finances will be used to reward athletes who win a gold medal in each of the 48 athletics events in Paris with US$50,000 (Ksh6.5 million). Relay teams will receive the same amount, to be shared among the team.
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