Canadian Olympic bonuses don’t add up to a pot of gold

Sweat equity does not always equate to actual equity for Olympic athletes who make the medal stand.

It is no newsflash that winning a medal at the Games does not lead to a financial jackpot, but it's worth checking out how Canada's medal bonuses measure up to other countries'. The Canadian Olympic Committee, through its corporate fundraising officers, will pay an athlete $20,000 for a gold medal in London, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze. For the first time, her or his coach will also get a bonus that works out to half the size of the athlete's: $10,000 for gold, $7,500 for silver and $5,000 for bronze. Those bonuses go to the coach of the team, though, not the athlete's personal coach, a key point that might have been overlooked.

The coaching bonus is a welcome change. Full-time coaches are common in some amateur sports, such as swimming but others rely on volunteers and part-timers. However, from the looks of it, the COC pay scale lags behind the rest of the world, if not its southern neighbour.

The United States Olympic Committee pays out $25,000 for a gold medal and the same amount as Canada for a silver or bronze. That seems rather paltry, given that the USOC represents a country of 300 million instead of 33 million and should also be flush financially thanks to hosting the Games in 1996 and 2002. The difference in the U.S. is that the potential for endorsements — at least in sports that get prime-time TV coverage, namely athletics, gymnastics and swimming — are far greater than in a smaller market such as Canada. There are also bonuses available to athletes in certain sports, thanks to corporate sponsorship.

So obviously for Canada, the bar isn't set at what the USOC does for its medallists. Different country, larger economy. Overseas, many other countries outdo North America when it comes to rewarding Olympians. Indonesia, which won five medals in Beijing four years ago, is promising 1 billion rupiah for a gold medallist, or about $107,000 Canadian. A bronze medallist from the Southeast Asia nation will get $400,000 rupiah, which works out to be about the same as Canada's gold-medal bonus.

That's in keeping with what happens in the rest of the world. From Maggie Hendricks:

Those differences probably speak to the reality the Olympics have a lot more cachet in Asia and Europe. In North America, the Games are more of a break every second year from a steady sports-watching diet of baseball, basketball, hockey and football.

It's also not a guarantee that offering larger bonuses would yield to better Canadian Olympic performances. Putting more resources into grooming younger athletes is probably be money better spent, especially in an underpopulated nation. (Canada's extra spending for Vancouver 2010 only yielded two more medals than it did at the previous Winter Olympics in Turin).

However, people who appreciate the relative difficulty of a Canadian winning at the Summer Games as opposed to the winter iteration would feel better if the athletes received a greater reward.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.