Sally Pearson: Athletes dudded amid glaring $11.5bn Olympics reality
The Olympics is the pinnacle of world sport, but behind the glitz and glamour is an unfair reality athletes shouldn’t have to deal with.
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COMMENT
The cost of representing Australia. How much is it really worth?
It’s not all glitz and glamour competing in the biggest sporting event in the world.
Most of the time, it can be a heavy financial burden. Being called an Olympian is not a guarantee, but it’s a goal for a lot of athletes, and that goal typically starts at a very tender age.
For me, it was at six years old, when I decided that I wanted to be the best in the world.
It starts off as a wonder, then a dream, and then only hopefully, a reality.
You don’t think about the sacrifices that you’ll have to make when you’re six, you’re only thinking of the end goal.
It’s not until you’ve started the journey that you realise that life outside of sport comes in to play and you have to start making decisions — one of them being, can I afford to be an athlete? Can I afford to live out my dream?
I was 17 when I became a pro. I was offered an Adidas contract which was worth $15,000 annually before agent fees.
At the time, it felt a lot of money, but it only got me to and from Europe and maybe some living expenses, and then it was gone.
From then on, I worked my butt off to make sure I could make a living out of being an athlete. Nothing is amateur anymore, not even the Olympics.
I reached out to some of our current Australian athletics team members to ask how much it has cost them to at the very least try and get themselves selected on the Australian team.
Alanah Yukich, our women’s 400m hurdles contender, made one last-ditch effort to try and get herself on the team, taking part in five competitions in 16 days across two continents, including North America and Europe.
This short stint cost her $6000 out of her own pocket — and that’s just flights, let alone Ubers and food to survive.
After reaching out to the public, Yukich set up a GoFundMe page to help cover those costs.
“It has definitely helped take away the financial struggle from me leading up to the Olympics,” Yukich said.
Tori West, competing in the women’s heptathlon, forked out an astonishing $35,000 which included paying for her two coaches to accompany her on her endeavours across Europe and the Pacific, which she said “was a big bet, but it paid off, thankfully”.
Our sole 110m hurdles competitor, Tayleb Willis, spent over $10,000 on his trip to Canada before heading to France to join the Australian team.
Before being selected on the Australian team, athletes have to travel the world in search of any competition they can get themselves into in hopes of securing that elusive qualification. The qualifying period for the Olympics closed at the end of June.
Once selected, and once the athlete is in the preparation camp, all living expenses while there and in the Olympic Village is paid for, which is nice, in theory — but what about the living expenses that await the athletes back home?
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) says its revenue for the period from 2017 to 2020/2021 was A$11.5 billion.
It says it distributes 90 per cent of that revenue “straight back into sport and athlete development” — the equivalent of A$6.39 million every day to help athletes and sporting organisations.
But many athletes don’t see that money and have to fork out their own money to pursue their Olympic dream.
They give up their day jobs and are a lot of the time unpaid in order to fulfil a lifelong dream.
Our athletes are about to step foot inside the Stade de France proudly wearing the green and gold for Australia, and will do it all for the benefit of us, the public, sitting back here in our armchairs cheering them on.
Yep, that’s right. Our Olympians do not get paid to entertain us at the biggest sporting event in the world, the Olympics.
Fancy telling Taylor Swift “oh, by the way, your Eras tour will be pro bono, so you won’t be getting paid to entertain the crowd”.
Um, I’m pretty sure Taylor wouldn’t “shake it off” and agree to that. So why do we expect our athletes to?
In fact, everyone at the Olympics except for the volunteers and the athletes get paid. I spoke to sports commentator David Culbert to get his thoughts.
“The gun goes off and there are 12 athletes in the final racing for free and then we cross to ad break after ad break, which are all paying for advertising, then we cross back to another Olympic final with another 12 athletes all competing for free,” he said.
“It might’ve worked for our first Olympic athlete Edwin Flack back on 1896, but it doesn’t work in 2024.”
I believe that athletes should be paid to compete at the Olympics. They are working just like anyone else and performing on a world stage, not just for the personal fulfilment, but also for our benefit.
Hopefully one day the IOC understands this, and finds a way for all to benefit from what is.
Sally Pearson is an Olympic gold medallist and one of Australia’s greatest ever track and field athletes. She is writing exclusively with news.com.au ahead of the Paris Olympics
Originally published as Sally Pearson: Athletes dudded amid glaring $11.5bn Olympics reality
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