World Aquatics Will Not Match Coe Money For Athletics Olympic Gold Medals Move In Paris
World Aquatics will not match the move of Sebastian Coe and World Athletics to break with 128 years of Olympic tradition by becoming the first sport to award winning athletes prize money at the Paris 2024 Olympics this summer.
Swimming authorities discussed such a move for the first time before Tokyo but shied away from tinkering with Olympic tradition. Instead, a spokesman told SOS today, swimming leaders opted instead to raise World Championship rewards.
Discussions overlapped with the swim regulators battle to reassert its authority because of the popularity of the International Swimming League. The two organisations battled in a drawn-out court case before a line was drawn.
Lord Coe, head of Worlds Athletics and member of the International Olympic Committee, has defended the federation’s move, one making headlines around the world today.
Gold medal-winning athletes in each of the 48 track and field events at the Games will win $50,000. The move reflects how the world has changed since the days of the “amateur rule”, which was sunk in the mid-1980s, when Coe was one of the first athletes top address Olympic Congress and among the first to benefit from trust funds and prize money in his sport.
The World Athletics decision, however, is seen to have blindsided the International Olympic Committee because IOC president Thomas Bach was unaware of the move before it was announced.
On the other hand, Track and Field’s move hints at the kind of welcome and changes that would come to pass if Lord Coe replaces Bach as IOC president next year, a move that would be popular among athletes who want an IOC commitment to “make athletes out priority” to be converted from word to deed.
Of late, Bach has written heartening words backing the women who campaign yet for justice in Olympic sport but it’s been quite another matter when it comes to matching words with deeds.
Sean Ingle writes an incisive commentary in The Guardian, noting Coe’s “smart move”: “The fact that World Athletics’ president Sebastian Coe didn’t speak to IOC president Thomas Bach in advance – and that Coe is an expected candidate when Bach’s job comes up for election next year – will not have gone unnoticed in the corridors of Lausanne either.”