Paralympic medalists receive hundreds of thousands of dollars less than Olympic medalists

(CNN) — As 2024 draws to a close, many of us will be hoping for a healthy bonus to help ring in the New Year. Elite athletes are no different.

Many gold medalists from this year’s Olympics in Paris will be enjoying vast bonuses and gifts in reward for their athletic achievements. However, a CNN Sport analysis has found that many of their Paralympic colleagues are being paid less to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In many countries, National Olympic and Paralympic committees (NOCs and NPCs, respectively) and governing bodies are separate entities and govern their respective sports differently than their counterparts. For example, the United States has one body – the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) – while Australia has two – the Australian Olympic Committee and Paralympics Australia. Similarly, World Athletics and World Para Athletics are distinct bodies governing able-bodied track and field and para track and field respectively.

Many NOCs and NPCs are funded through government support and private sources through sponsorship and rights, such as Spain’s. Some, like Great Britain or China, receive a majority of government funding along with other sources (e.g. a national lottery). Others, such as the USOPC, are nonprofit corporations, which have no government funding at all and are reliant on both private investment and the generosity of the population of the country (e.g. the USOPC’s direct fan donation scheme).

CNN reached out to Olympic and Paralympic authorities from every nation competing at this year’s Games in Paris – some like Great Britain prohibit or do not allow awards to be given to athletes – and sourced data from reliable local reporting where available. At least 42 countries awarded gold medalists over $100,000 after the Paris Olympics, meanwhile, only 23 countries and Taiwan awarded their Paralympic champions bonuses of this size.

“Looking across the world, it is very disappointing that nations place such a varying importance on the funding of their athletes and that the profile and opportunity for para-athletes is often overlooked,” Sarah Storey, Great Britain’s most successful ever Paralympic athlete, told CNN Sport.

Singapore’s Paralympic champions earn a bonus of 500,000 Singapore Dollars (around $385,000), the largest figure of any country. However, this is half the sum awarded to Olympic champions.

Paralympic gold medalists from Hong Kong are awarded HK$1.5 million (around $190,000). While generous, it is 75% smaller than the bonus given to Olympic gold medalists from the city state. Silver Olympic medalists are given considerably larger bonuses – HK$3 million (around $386,000) – than gold Paralympic medalists from Hong Kong.

The Vietnamese Olympic Committee reportedly pledged a $1 million bonus to any athlete who won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics. Prospective Paralympic gold medalists from Vietnam were given an incentive of a little over 1% of their Olympic colleagues, at just 400 million Vietnamese dong (around $15,700) – the highest discrepancy identified by CNN.

CNN reached out to the Hong Kong Paralympic Committee, Vietnamese Paralympic Committee and Singapore National Paralympic Committee for comment but has not heard back.

Of the 205 nations and territories competing at Paris 2024, CNN identified at least 74 nations that allow prize money for their Olympic champions, only 30 of which award Olympic and Paralympic champions equal bonuses. CNN was only able to identify 55 countries where prize money was pledged to Paralympic medalists. There are at least 10 nations – including Great Britain, Bangladesh, Iceland, Norway and Yemen – that don’t offer financial rewards to either Olympic or Paralympic gold medalists.

On top of the rewards provided to medalists by individual nations and Olympic bodies, World Athletics (WA) provides gold medalists in Olympic track and field events $50,000 in prize money. This isn’t the case for Paralympic gold medalists.

When reached by CNN, World Para Athletics (WPA) said in a statement: “While World Para Athletics is not in a position to offer prize money in Para athletics events at the moment, we encourage investment in our sport and look forward to the day when we can engage in discussions about how we can reward our amazing athletes.”

World Para Athletics also emphasized to CNN that, while WA had 48 medal events at Paris 2024, WPA had 164 medal events at the Paralympic Games in the City of Light, highlighting the additional hurdle of providing funding for over triple the amount of events.

Despite that, nine-time British Paralympic gold medalist Hannah Cockroft told Sky Sports that the discrepancy was “frustrating” and called for parity.

“It’s tough seeing the Olympic guys get the money from World Athletics and then we can’t replicate, it’s frustrating” she told the British broadcaster. “That would really pay for my wedding quite well. Ultimately, I do this because I love it. We want parity and that’s what we push for every time.”

Ian Brittain, an academic at Coventry University and an expert in the study of Paralympic sport, told CNN that the differences in rewards “clearly sends a message of ‘less than.’”

Brittain added the differential between Paralympic and Olympic champions “reinforces much of the other systemic and structural discrimination disabled people encounter on a daily basis that makes their lives both more difficult and more expensive than most non-disabled people.”

Such an approach, he added, rewards disabled athletes “less than a non-disabled person when their achievements were probably both more expensive to them personally and harder to achieve given the barriers (environmental and attitudinal) they have had to overcome to reach that level.”

Honors and automobiles

Companies and individuals in many nations lauded their Olympic champions with gifts varying from the extremely generous, to the eccentric.

In addition to a cash reward of 30 million pesos (over $535,000), Filipino gymnast Carlos Edriel Yulo was reportedly rewarded a set of headlights, free ramen and colonoscopies for life, university credits and a condo after winning gold at the Paris Olympics.

Despite the disparity in financial bonuses, Paralympic athletes from around the world also returned home to a wide variety of gifts.

Notably, the Malaysian government pledged RM 1 million (around $235,000) plus a lifetime monthly stipend of RM 5,000 (roughly $1,113) to individual athletes who won gold in either the Olympics and Paralympics. However, only two of their athletes – both Paralympians, badminton player Cheah Liek Hou and powerlifter Bonnie Bunyau Gustin – took home a gold medal from Paris.

Much like their Olympic colleagues, para-athletes who won gold medals from Uzbekistan were awarded a Chevy Tahoe SUV and a two-story cottage, according to local media reports. Their silver and bronze medal-winning colleagues were also awarded a car and an apartment.

In Romania, Olympic medalists came home to Hyundais gifted from billionaire Ion Țiriac, while Paralympic medalists received Toyotas when they returned from Paris, Sally Lamont, the president of Romania’s National Paralympic Committee confirmed.

Turning of the tides?

While there is still disparity in how Paralympic and Olympic champions are rewarded by their home nations, there is evidence that this is changing.

Several countries have recently achieved bonus parity for their Paralympic and Olympic champions.

Canada is one of the more recent nations to adopt this approach, with the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Canadian Paralympic Committee announcing in January 2024 that both sets of athletes would be awarded CA$20,000 (around $14,500) for a gold medal.

The small former Soviet country of Georgia is the most generous nation to give equal sums to Paralympic and Olympic champions, awarding both 1 million GEL (around $370,000).

The United States is comparatively less generous, awarding $37,500 to both Olympic and Paralympic gold medalists.

Latvia’s Paralympians used to receive half the medal bonus of their Olympic counterparts, but they have been equal since the London 2012 Games – with its three gold medalists earning €142,288 (around $150,000) each in Paris 2024.

Other nations have stated that they plan to achieve parity in the near future.

Lithuanian Paralympic champions currently receive a bonus of €83,875 (around $94,000), which is exactly half what Olympic champions from the nation received. The Head of Communications for the Lithuanian Paralympic team, Donatas Gribauskas, told CNN Sport that the organization plans to equalize bonuses between Paralympic and Olympic champions in the near future. However, it has not been decided if this will be achieved by increasing Paralympic bonuses or by decreasing bonuses for Olympic gold medalists.

Nations, such as Australia and the Czech Republic adopted equal bonuses for the 2021 Games held in Tokyo. Australia awards gold medal winners AU$20,000 (around $13,400), while Czech Republic is considerably more generous, giving its champions 2.4 million Czech Crowns (over $100,000).

Double gold medal-winning Australian Paralympian Timothy Hodge told CNN Sport that the country’s move to equalize prize money was “an incredible step in recognizing us as equals to our Olympic counterparts,” adding that it “validates both the significance of our achievement and the work we put in to becoming the best in our chosen sport.”

However, he emphasized that this move did not mean he believed a parity of support had been achieved.

“To my knowledge and understanding, there are still large inequalities in the funding and support provided to para programs when compared to our Olympic counterparts, particularly in private organizations and governing bodies,” he told CNN.

“As a para-athlete to openly see our Olympic counterparts receiving more support and funding, it is very discouraging and disappointing, and often makes us feel like second class citizens in sport.”

A Paralympics Australia spokesperson told CNN Sport that, as of July 2024, “the high-performance investment into Paralympic sport has essentially doubled for the next two years.”

“The new and increased investment into Paralympic sport means Para-athletes within the high-performance system will actually have higher levels of funding per athlete than able bodied athletes,” they added.

Some nations, as noted before, are equally generous to both Paralympic and Olympic champions by not awarding medal prize money at all.

British athlete Storey tells CNN that Team GB’s approach is actually “more helpful” because it’s “easier to budget and work out what additional contribution you need to find through sponsorship or working alongside.”

British athletes, both Olympic and Paralympic, receive funding from the UK government and National Lottery. Over £245 million ($318.45 million) was allocated via these routes for the Paris Olympics, split between 30 sports – or £8.17 million ($10.62 million) per sport. Almost £70 million (nearly $91 million) was provided for the Paralympics, split between 20 sports – or £3.5 million ($4.55 million) per sport.

However, Storey added that “it would be great to see both a regular funding model for preparation costs AND a bonus structure with prize money in all sports.”

The 19-time Paralympic gold medalist emphasized that “the biggest challenge for potential para-athletes is the adaptations that are needed to equipment to enable someone to start in a sport.”

She added: “All of these things cost money and are rarely provided by any nation. Even in Great Britain, these things are no longer supported.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.