This you deserve for an Olympic title

Often I have worried about the unfair distribution between athletes and what they earn from their professional careers. Footballers often earn millions per year and live ’the luxurious life’. But with our hockey players, that's a whole different story. With many other athletes, it is the case that they have to keep a job alongside their top sport because they cannot live off the sport.

The Olympic Games are the highest attainable goal for all kinds of top sports outside of football. Because football is somewhat neglected at the Games. Perhaps because they themselves also understand that the interest is now directed towards the sports that we otherwise would not encounter on TV so quickly. And when you watch how all those top athletes work up a sweat, the tears they shed for the titles they either win or just miss, you can almost feel their perseverance and determination through the screen. But what do they earn from it, besides the confirmation that their hard work has not been in vain?

Well, that varies quite a bit by country. Most American athletes receive an amount of about 92,000 euros, but in Poland they are even working on building an entire Olympic neighborhood where all athletes would get a house. That seems quite high pressure to me, by the way, when you see that your neighbors go to the gym every day while you want to be lazy on the couch for a month. But they also thought it was a good idea in Kazakhstan, because there too they intend to offer all athletes an apartment. In the Netherlands, it is quite meager when you compare these rewards with those from here. Dutch top athletes receive 7,500 euros for winning bronze, 15,000 for a silver medal, and 30,000 euros is the reward for the one who takes home the gold.

A nice extra pocket money of course, but the contrast with other countries is quite large. In Hong Kong and Singapore, the amount fluctuates around 700,000 euros. In Estonia, they transfer 6,000 euros to the winning athletes every month. In the Netherlands, they mainly have to rely on the cheering and encouragement from the fans.