The president of the International Olympic Committee has rejected calls to pay Olympic athletes for competing or winning at the Games, drawing a clear line at a moment when several sports, including track and field, have started moving in the opposite direction.
Kirsty Coventry, a former Olympic swimming gold medalist from Zimbabwe who took over the IOC roughly ten months ago, made the comments during a visit to New Zealand this month. She spoke with the New Zealand outlet Sport Nation while meeting with Olympic officials from across the Pacific.
“I don’t believe in paying athletes,” Coventry told Sport Nation. “I come from a small country, I came from a sport that doesn’t necessarily pay athletes very well, and I still don’t think we should be paying athletes at the Olympic Games.”
The remarks land in the middle of one of the IOC’s most sensitive debates. Olympic athletes are typically funded by a mix of national sporting organisations, often through taxpayer money, plus sponsorship and self-funding. They are not paid for showing up at the Games or for winning medals.
According to figures cited by Sport Nation, the IOC takes in roughly $1.5 billion USD per Games. Only about 0.5 percent of that flows back to athletes, either through their national Olympic committees or through the IOC’s Olympic Solidarity programme. The IOC itself states that it redistributes 90 percent of its revenue to support athletes and sports organisations worldwide, with most of that money going to organising committees, federations and development programmes rather than direct payments to competitors. Some countries are now stepping in directly, including a $100 million pledge from a U.S. billionaire to start paying every American Olympian.
A growing prize-money trend
For endurance athletes who follow the sport closely, the most relevant comparison sits in track and field. World Athletics broke a long-standing taboo at Paris 2024 by becoming the first international federation to pay Olympic champions directly. Individual gold medalists in athletics received $50,000 USD, with the same sum to be split among winning relay teams, subject to result ratification and anti-doping checks.
The debate over athlete pay in track has been building for years. World indoor 3,000m champion Josh Kerr publicly criticised the lack of prize money in athletics after collecting a $40,000 payout in 2024. Outside the federation system, Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track league and the Athlos women’s track meet founded by Alexis Ohanian have entered the sport with multi-million-dollar prize pots.
A similar conversation is unfolding in tennis. Roland Garros director Amélie Mauresmo has refused to overhaul prize money this year, even as top players push back. According to Inside the Games, players argue that they currently receive only 14.3 percent of the tournament’s revenue and want that share raised to 22 percent. The French Open has confirmed a 9.5 percent increase in total prize money to €61.7 million ($71.9 million USD), including €2.8 million ($3.26 million USD) for each singles champion.
Coventry, asked whether the IOC should follow a similar path, did not budge.
“Well, they get beautiful venues. They get beautiful villages. They get a beautiful experience,” she said. “And all of that comes from the money that we raise.”
She added a warning about what changing the model would do to the breadth of the Games. “If the entire movement wants us to change, we would have not as many countries, we’d have not many sports, we’d be very particular on what that would look like,” Coventry said. “I don’t think that’s the Olympic Games and I don’t think the Olympic movement thinks that’s the Olympic Games.”
Name, image and likeness
Coventry also pushed back on the idea of importing a system similar to the one now used in U.S. college sports. Until 2021, student-athletes in the United States were barred from earning money off their name, image and likeness, known as NIL. The NCAA changed those rules that year, and college athletes can now sign endorsement deals while keeping their eligibility.
Olympic athletes have no such arrangement. The IOC can use their name, image and likeness to promote and celebrate the Games without paying them for it. Coventry said she does not believe the Olympic movement should follow the NCAA’s lead.
Instead, she pointed to indirect support. The IOC, she said, must “find more ways to directly impact athletes and find ways to help them on their journey to becoming Olympians and while they’re Olympians.” That includes talent identification, scholarships and help moving into a career after sport.
Coventry drew on her own background to defend the system. “I was an Olympic solidarity scholarship holder,” she said. “Without that money, I’m not sure I would have been as successful, and so I’m so grateful for that.”
A ‘Fit For Future’ review
A big part of Coventry’s early agenda has been a review of the Games she calls “Fit For Future.” Since taking the top job, she has already moved to bar transgender and DSD athletes from women’s events at the 2028 Games, and reportedly shut the door on adding cross country running to the Winter Olympics.
“We needed to just pause for a little bit and really reflect and better understand and take stock of where we are now, the things that we have, the things that we’re doing,” she said. “And then figure it out, is it still relevant? Are those the same things that we need to do? How do we evolve?”
On athlete pay, the answer is no.
The pressure on her position is real, and it is showing up at the edges of Olympic sport. In swimming, two-time U.S. Olympian Hunter Armstrong joined the Enhanced Games, where, according to SwimSwam, he won $375,000 USD without using performance-enhancing drugs, while still aiming to train for Los Angeles in 2028. Fellow American Olympic medalist Cody Miller also joined the Enhanced Games, won two events and walked away with $500,000 USD, the largest payday of his career. Both have been open about the financial squeeze on athletes who reach the top of an Olympic sport but cannot make a living from it.
0 Comments