End Is Nigh For 'Athlete No Games Pay Day'? IOC Offers $10k 'Grant' To All Olympians
IOC session reveals offer of direct money 'grants' to all Olympians but dopers cut out of $10k payments due to all from Milano 2026 Winter Games onwards; session also raises prospect of entire disciplines within a sports stable, being dropped from future Games
The devil may well be in the details but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is to offer "a $10,000 grant" for Olympians, which every athlete who competes at future Games "can apply for".
Kirsty Coventry sparked a backlash from athletes recently when she said she "did not believe in paying athletes" for their part in the Olympic multi-billions industry she presides over.
Today, in announcing the Fit for the Future $10k grants scheme, she said discussions had been going on 'for years' (* see below). Perhaps she simple forgot to mention the 10k offer to all Olympians before athletes called for direct payments.
Much mention was made of 'solidarity' programs of the kind Coventry benefitted from herself as a Zimbabwean. However, many leading sports, and women from top sports nations see no direct financial benefit from competing at the highest level at the Games. That goes for podium placers galore, as well as finalists across many sports, swimming among them.
Today at an IOC Extraordinary Session press conference at a Convention Center in Ecublens, just west of Lausanne where the IOC has its global HQ in Switzerland, Coventry revealed changes to the Olympic Charter and the offer of $10,000 grants to Olympians. The program is called the Fit for the Future Olympian Grant.
Around 10,000 athletes compete at a summer Games, which would mean a bill of around $100m for the IOC, an organisation that generated more than $7bn of revenues in the Tokyo 2020ne to Paris 2024 Olympic cycle it emerged from with a $1bn surplus.
Pau Gasol Saez, chair of the IOC's in-house athletes commission described the grant scheme as "a win for all of us", Reuters reports. Effectively, it would mean direct funding of all Olympians to the tune of $2,500 a year in an Olympic, four-year, cycle.
The top 10 IOC directors are paid more than $30 million between them in the same period of time:
Craig Lord
Clarity on the new IOC scheme so far is as follows... including the line that doping offenders will not be eligible for the money. It appears all other athletes (Aa accreditation) will be eligible, with Milano 2026 Winter Games athletes being the first generation of eligible athletes.
The IOC Statement:
"For the first time in history, every athlete at the Olympic Games will be eligible for a new USD 10,000 “Fit for the Future Olympian Grant”. The grant has been set up to support the sporting career or the career transition of Olympians. A fund of USD 140 million per Olympiad has been set aside, as announced today by the Chair of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Athletes’ Commission (AC), Pau Gasol, during the 146th IOC Session in Lausanne, Switzerland. The first athletes to benefit from this initiative will be the Olympians who competed at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games."
"This is one of the first actions taken as part of the “Fit for the Future” strategic framework to find new and complementary ways to provide support to athletes with their long-term sporting endeavours or career transition. With this new fund, the IOC is delivering immediately on its commitment.
"The Fit for the Future Olympian Grant complements the existing support programmes. About 14,000 Olympians per Olympiad are expected to be eligible for a grant of USD 10,000 for each edition of the Olympic Games in which they compete. The grant will be delivered through existing National Olympic Committee (NOC) structures. If an Olympian chooses not to apply for this grant, their allocation will remain in the fund to benefit future Olympians. The grant will not decrease or detract from already existing support provided by the IOC to the NOCs, International Sports Federations (IFs), Organising Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOGs) or Olympic Solidarity.
Announcing the grant to the IOC membership, Gasol said: “This grant will be available to every Olympian. Not just medal winners. Not just athletes from certain countries. Every Olympian. Because, while every athlete's journey is different, every Olympian has made sacrifices to reach the Olympic stage. Years of dedication. Years of hard work. Years of believing in a dream. This is not prize money. This is about recognising the journey and the commitment it takes to become an Olympian. And it is about recognising that every Olympian is part of our Olympic community, and honouring those who have come before us and paved the way, so that current and future generations of Olympians can benefit.”
“It has been a topic of conversation for many years, and I am extremely proud that we are now able to do this,” - IOC President Kirsty Coventry said*
The following Olympians will be eligible for the grant:
All athletes who have participated in the Olympic Games with an Aa accreditation, starting from Milano Cortina 2026.
The grant is only for Olympians. Participants at the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are not eligible.
All Olympians are eligible, provided that they have not committed an Anti-Doping Rule Violation, or violated the IOC Code of Ethics, the Conditions of Participation, or the Olympic Charter.
The IOC will now work on the application and delivery mechanism for the grant with the aim of opening the application process for Milano Cortina 2026 at the end of this year, with the first payments being made in 2027.
And here is SOS's Olympic day marker from yesterday, with links to pour coverage, analysis and editorial on the Fair Play for Fair Pay debate that took on a sharper blade in the wake of Coventry's comments.
Craig Lord
The IOC grant appears not to include any money for medals.
Here is what independent athlete representative body Global Athlete has proposed, in an interim suggestion, that would cost around $280m, a sum that is also well within the scope of Olympic budgets:
Craig Lord
The session in Switzerland also revealed changes to the Olympic Charter said to be designed to reinforce the notion that there must be no politics in Olympic sport. Critics have already said that the changes are part of a move that would end up seeing Russia and Belarus welcomed back into the Olympic fold as opposed to allowing athletes from those countries to comp[ete under a neutral flag.
While the latter has some support in sport, the former, allowing 'Putin's sporting army' back in before the LA20928 Olympics is deeply unpopular, the links between government and sport far too close, as the Sochi 2014 doping scandal proved with a following, performance-enhanced wind.
More on that aspect of the IOC coming on a separate file soon.
Meanwhile, two other items were highlighted by the IOC:
- It has set a target election date of 2029 to decide which country will host the 2036 Olympic Games.
and ...
Where A Whole World Aquatics Discipline Could Be Dropped From The Games
- CHANGES TO SPORTS PROGRAMME
The IOC has made changes to the Olympic sports programme, in which individual disciplines, rather than entire sports, will be evaluated for selection to feature in the games, winter and summer, as of Brisbane 2032.
Reuters reported that IOC member Tony Estanguet told fellow members of the private club that "evaluating inclusion in the programme by discipline rather than by sport" would will help safeguard the quality and affordability of the Olympics.
Potentially significant to Aquatics is this:
"Under the changes, a discipline is defined as one or more events within a sport that require either a dedicated field of play or a significant modification of a shared field of play involving specialised equipment."
For World Aquatics, that means five disciplines: swimming, diving, artistic swimming, water polo and open water swimming. Each would assessed individually, IOC sports director Pierre Ducrey told Reuters.
The implication is that a while discipline could be dropped in favour of adding a new one in its place. he did not specify Aquatics but noted:
"There's a lot of sports out there that are dreaming to be on the Olympic programme and never had an opportunity to do so."
David Lappartient, president of the Union Cycliste Internationale, gave warning that the approach could put some sports at risk of losing their place. Calling for data-driven not ad hoc decisions, he told Reuters:
"If you have to remove (a) sport in the Olympic programmes, it has a lot of consequences for the athletes themselves, for the NOCs (National Olympic Committees), for the international federations."
Newly included disciplines would remain in the programme for a minimum of two Olympic cycles while their performance is assessed, while any sports removed from the programme would receive financial assistance during a transition period, the IOC said.
A final decision on the proposal is yet to be made, and hang on the recommendations from the IOC Executive Board.
