MOSCOW — Russia’s individual Olympic gold medal-winners at the Sydney Games in September can expect a 100,000 dollar bonus, the country’s leading sports official announced on Wednesday.

‘We had a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday where he promised our athletes 50,000, 20,000 and 10,000 dollars respectively for a gold, silver and bronze,’ Vitaly Smirnov, the president of Russia’s national Olympic committee, said.

‘In addition, our Olympic committee will pay each individual gold medal-winner in Sydney an extra 50,000-dollar bonus. We’re also promised by the government that this money will not be taxed.’

While the 100,000-dollar bonus for an individual gold medal remained unchanged from the previous two Games, in Atlanta in 1996 and Nagano in 1998, the rewards for lesser medals have been reduced.

‘It wasn’t easy for our government to find the funds to pay our Olympic medal-winners, taking into account a difficult economic situation in our country,’ Smirnov said.

‘But we were able to convince them of the importance of such bonuses to many of our top athletes, especially if you know how much money other countries are paying their athletes.’

Smirnov said his country hopes to win up to 37 gold medals in Sydney. Russia won a total of 26 golds in Atlanta, finishing a distant second in the medals table behind the United States.

Earlier this year, other former Soviet republics — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and the Ukraine — approved incentives for their Olympic medal winners involving similar amounts of money or free housing for their champions.

Reuters

Source: SOCOG