World Athletics’ (WA) plan to offer prize money to Olympic gold medallists is a much needed step in the right direction, said American track and field athletes, with the high costs of training and competition weighing on competitors.

WA President Sebastian Coe bucked 128 years of tradition when he said last week that the athletics governing body would pay gold medal winners in Paris $50,000, a move that athletes were quick to endorse.

“You can lose money in track and field as soon as you step out the door,” Tara Davis-Woodhall, the indoor world champion in long jump, told reporters this week at the Team USA Media Summit in New York.

Davis-Woodhall said even travelling to competitions presents a major financial burden for many athletes.

“If I don’t have a sponsorship, who’s going to pay for this? I’m going to go in debt like 100%,” said Davis-Woodhall, who won a silver medal at the 2023 world championships in Budapest. “It’s not a sustainable thing to do at all.”

Under the WA plan, a $2.4 million prize pot will be split between the 48 athletics gold medallists at the Paris Games, which start on July 26.

Silver and bronze medal winners will also receive prize funds beginning at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.

“It’s about time,” said Olympic 200 metres silver medallist Kenny Bednarek. “You have athletes that work their butt off, blood, sweat and tears every single day, every single year. And, you know, some compensation is needed for them.”

Their remarks echoed the endorsement of United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) CEO Sarah Hirshland, who applauded the plan.

“Any time we can put resources in the hands of athletes, we should all celebrate,” Hirshland told reporters in New York on Monday.

“We need more resources to get into the hands of athletes, so that they have both the ability to sustain themselves from a just day-to-day lifestyle perspective, but then also (to) continue to invest in their training.”

But the prize money plan has attracted plenty of criticism from other corners of international sport.

British Olympic Association chief Andy Anson told Sky Sports on Wednesday that World Athletics created a problem by moving unilaterally on the issue.

The head of cycling’s global governing body said on Tuesday that WA had gone against the Olympic spirit, while World Rowing head Jean-Christophe Rolland said he wished WA had discussion with other sports, saying the decision has “other implications.”

Twice Olympic shot put champion Ryan Crouser said he struggles to see how anyone could oppose the prize money.

“I know athletes that have medalled at world championships are still working two jobs and living with a room mate,” the world record holder said.

“It’s just the misconception that kind of lingers that athletes, regardless of what level you’re at, if you’re making the Olympics, that you’re that you’re financially secure and you are absolutely not.”

-Reuters

The United States will top the medals table for the fourth straight Summer Games in Paris, while France will get a major host-nation bump from eighth to third, according to a forecast 100 days out from the opening ceremony.

The Gracenote virtual medals table, opens new tab, which is compiled using results data from key global and continental competitions since the Tokyo Olympics, has the U.S. on top both on gold medal count (39) and total medal count (123).

The U.S. will host the next Olympics after Paris in Los Angeles in 2028.

France is predicted to win 28 gold medals and 55 in total, a jump of 18 golds and 22 medals from its performance in Tokyo three years ago, and will replace the host nation of that Games, Japan, in third place on the table.

China, the last country apart from the U.S. to top the medal table, will retain second place with 35 gold medals, while Britain, Australia and Japan will win the fourth highest number of gold medals with 13 apiece, Gracenote predicts.

The Russian Olympic Committee team were fifth on the Tokyo medals table but only a few Russians and Belarusians will compete in Paris as neutral athletes because of sanctions put in place after the invasion of Ukraine.

“Almost all Russian and Belarusian competitors have been absent from international competitions since February 2022,” Gracenote, the content solutions unit of Nielsen, said in a news release.

“Any who take part in Paris 2024 without results in this period cannot be predicted accurately. However, it appears that there will be limited participation of these athletes and we expect the medal table to be the usual accurate reflection.”

Ukraine, whose athletes have struggled to prepare for the Games because of the continuing conflict at home, are forecast to win three golds and 13 total medals in Paris.

At the bottom of the table, Tajikistan, Finland, San Marino, Trinidad & Tobago, North Korea, Fiji, Panama and Vietnam are all forecast to win a single bronze medal.

-Reuters

The torch for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was lit in ancient Olympia in a traditional ceremony on Tuesday, marking the final stretch of the seven-year preparations for the Games’ start on July 26.

Greek actress Mary Mina, playing the role of high priestess, lit the torch using a backup flame instead of a parabolic mirror that is normally used, due to cloudy skies, for the start of a relay in Greece and France.

It will culminate with the lighting of the Olympic flame in the French capital at the opening ceremony. Paris will host the summer Olympics for a third time after 1900 and 1924.

“In these difficult times we are living through, with wars and conflicts on the rise, people are fed up with all the hate, the aggression and negative news they are facing day in and day out,” International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach said in his speech.

“We are longing for something which brings us together, something that is unifying, something that gives us hope. The Olympic flame that we are lighting today is the symbol of this hope.”

The IOC has cleared the way for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at the Olympics despite the ongoing war in Ukraine but they will do so as neutral athletes with no national flag or anthem, a decision that angered Moscow.

French President Emmanuel Macron also said last week Russia would be asked to observe a ceasefire in Ukraine during the Paris Olympics. The Kremlin said Ukraine might use it as an opportunity to regroup and rearm.

Suspending armed conflicts under an Olympic truce during the Games was a standard practice in ancient Greece.

TORCH RELAY

The high priestess then lit the torch of the first runner of the relay, Greece’s Olympic rowing champion Stefanos Ntouskos.

After a short run he then handed the flame on to France’s three-time Olympic medallist in swimming and head of Paris’ Olympic torch relay, Laure Manaudou, as the representative of the host city.

The flame will be officially handed over to Paris Games organisers in Athens’s Panathenaic stadium, site of the first modern Games in 1896, on April 26 after an 11-day relay across Greece.

It will then depart the next day for France on board a three-masted ship, the ‘Belem’ where it will arrive on May 8 in Marseille, with up to 150,000 people expected to attend the ceremony in the southern city’s Old Port.

The last torch bearer in Marseille will climb on the roof of the Velodrome stadium on May 9, organisers said.

Marseille, founded by the Greek settlers of Phocaea around 600 BC, will host the sailing competitions.

The French torch relay will last 68 days and will end in Paris with the lighting of the Olympic flame on July 26.

-Reuters