{"id":12619,"date":"2012-08-06T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=12619"},"modified":"2016-08-10T02:37:53","modified_gmt":"2016-08-10T09:37:53","slug":"do-olympic-medalists-receive-cash-prizes-with-their-medals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2012\/08\/do-olympic-medalists-receive-cash-prizes-with-their-medals\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Olympic Medalists Receive Cash Prizes With Their Medals?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Kelly asks: Do Olympic medalists receive cash prizes with their medals?<\/div>\n

\"Now<\/a>Some are awarded cash prizes by their respective local Olympic committees or governments.\u00a0 Also, sometimes private businessmen will match values given, such as in Armenia where a man donated $700,000 to be added to the cash given by the Olympic committee for medals. Another similar thing occurred for Belarus athletes during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.\u00a0 Those Belarusians who won any medal in the Olympics that year not only got a cash prize ($100,000 for gold, $50,000 for silver, and $30,000 for bronze), but also were given free meat and sausage for life from a local major meat company, Belatmeat.\u00a0 In the end, though, typically any cash prizes and the decision on whether to award them each Olympics is decided by the local Olympic Committees in each country and generally all the cash for the bonuses comes from these committees.<\/p>\n

As to the amounts of these prizes, the United States Olympic Committee awards $25,000 for a gold medal, $15,000 for a silver, and 10,000 for a bronze.\u00a0 Kazakhstan’s Olympic Committee eclipses this, paying $250,000 for a gold, such as for the gold medal and world record performance accomplished by 19 year old Zulfiya Chinshanlo in women’s weightlifting at the 2012 London Olympics. (She lifted 131 kg or 288 lbs in the clean and jerk competition on the second day of the London Games.)<\/p>\n

The highest known bonus of any nation is given to gold medalists from Singapore, which awards $800,000 for such an accomplishment.\u00a0 Georgia is the runner up in the known cash bonus pools, awarding $706,000 to Olympic gold medalists from their country.<\/p>\n

While exact figures are hard to come by, as many Olympic Committees don’t make the numbers publicly known, some other countries whose athletes are known to receive cash prizes for Olympic medals include:<\/p>\n