Going for green: Olympic gold medalists will get cash prizes

As they get on their marks at the tracks at the 2024 Paris Olympics this summer, runners will aim for glory, gold medals — and that sweet government green. World Athletics, the international governing body for track and field, will pay $50,000 to the gold medalists for its events.

Athletics includes track and cross country running, disc, javelin and hammer throwing, pole vaulting, shot put, and the long, high and triple jumping events.

Money will go to the winners of each of the 48 Olympic events that fall under its purview, the body announced Wednesday. Relay winners will split their prize money among team members.

When the modern Olympics began in 1896, the events were all amateur, and the International Olympic Committee didn’t directly award prize money to winners.

The $2.4 million prize pot is taken from the share of Olympic revenue disbursed to World Athletics by the IOC.

While only gold medalists are getting paid big for the Paris Games, which run July 26-Aug. 11, World Athletics plans to pay silver and bronze medalists in its events at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

In order to receive their payments, winners will have to be ratified and cleared of doping by the IOC.

World Athletics is doing this, it said, to empower the athletes who help generate Olympic revenue.

“While it is impossible to put a marketable value on winning an Olympic medal, or on the commitment and focus it takes to even represent your country at an Olympic Games, I think it is important we start somewhere and make sure some of the revenues generated by our athletes at the Olympic Games are directly returned to those who make the Games the global spectacle that it is,” World Athletics President Sebastian Coe, who won four Olympic medals representing the U.K. in 1980 and 1984, said in the announcement.

Coe recognizes how different the landscape is for athletes today versus when he won his gold medals running in the 1,500 meters and silver in the 800.

“I’m probably the last generation to have been on the 75-pence (95-cent) meal voucher and second-class rail fare, competing for my own country. So believe me, I do understand the nature of the transition we’ve been in,” Coe told The Associated Press.