If Serbia’s Olympic authority is correct, then Djokovic will join Rafael Nadal as another huge name in Paris.
Former tennis world number one Novak Djokovic will play at the Summer Olympics Games in Paris, according to the Olympic Committee of Serbia.
“Novak Djokovic and Dusan Lajovic have fulfilled the conditions according to ATP ranking and confirmed their participation at the Summer Olympic Games in Paris 2024”, the Serbian committee said on their website on Tuesday.
Djokovic has not yet publicly confirmed the announcement.
At the start of June, the 24-time Grand Slam winner withdrew before his Roland Garros quarterfinal against Casper Ruud after a scan revealed a torn medial meniscus in his right knee.
Two weeks ago, Djokovic confirmed he had undergone an operation on his knee and that it “went well”, but gave no timeframe for his return.
Djokovic has long said he will prioritise the Olympic Games this summer as he chases an elusive singles gold.
In October last year, he said winning Olympic gold next year is one of his main ambitions, while before the clay tournaments this year, he reiterated his goal.
“The Paris Olympics are very important. The Olympics have always been a priority for me,” Djokovic said in April in advance of the clay swing in Monte Carlo.
He has played in four Olympic tournaments and won a bronze medal in Beijing in 2008. He has since twice come close to another medal
He lost the bronze-medal match to Juan Martin del Potro in London in 2012. He lost again to the Argentinian four years later in the first round in Rio.
At the last Games in Tokyo, Djokovic lost the bronze-medal match to Pablo Carreno Busta from Spain.
At the same tournament, he pulled out of the mixed doubles bronze medal match with a shoulder injury.
After his early exit at the Rolland Garros, Djokovic has slipped to third in the ATP rankings.
Paris, France – Diaba Konate was a rising star in French basketball.
Called up by the French Federation of Basketball (FFBB) at 17, she went on to play in the national youth teams in three major tournaments, reaching the finals of the U18 European Championship and the Youth Olympic Games in 2018, and winning a gold medal at the 2019 World Beach Games.
At the time, the sky was the limit.
She moved to the United States on a full scholarship to play with UC Irvine, surpassing 1,000 points in her collegiate career after scoring a season-high 20 against UC Santa Barbara in February 2023.
Now 24, Konate dreams of playing for France again, but it has become a trickier proposition.
What’s stopping Konate from another national call-up isn’t her potential – it’s that two years ago, she started wearing a hijab, a headscarf worn by many Muslim women to cover the hair and neck.
“I never thought it would be a big hindrance”, Konate told Al Jazeera, recalling how little changed when she started wearing it in the US at 22.
But when she wanted to play in a tournament in France that summer, match organisers told her she could only do it if she took off her hijab.
She felt “humiliated”, and later discovered that this was part of new FFBB regulations that forbid players from wearing “any equipment with a religious or political connotation”.
Konate felt “abandoned” by the FFBB and by many of her former national coaches, who never contacted her after Article 9.3 banning headscarves was implemented in December 2022.
Now, Konate has turned to activism to campaign with a collective called Basket Pour Toutes (Basketball For All) that includes mostly young hijab-wearing Muslim women in France who love basketball.
Together, they are defying a hijab ban in basketball and across French sports.
Their campaign is gaining momentum before the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera announced last September that French athletes wearing a hijab will be banned from competing.
Currently, any athlete wearing a hijab will be allowed to compete at Paris 2024 – except if they’re French.
Diaba Konate, who was a valuable contributor to her US college team during her stint with UC Irvine, faced no sportswear hijab restrictions while playing in the United States [Robert Johnson/Getty Images via AFP]Under current French basketball regulations, Konate would be unable to play professional basketball in France, or participate at the Paris 2024 Olympics, while wearing a sportswear hijab [Steph Chambers/Getty Images via AFP]
French laïcité and its impact on Muslim women
Timothee Gauthierot is a basketball club coach in the Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec – he is the co-founder of Basket Pour Toutes.
He said that even before this nationwide ban, there were very few hijab-wearing girls who dreamed of becoming professional athletes in France because “there is so much discrimination” against them. “We don’t allow them to reach that level”, he said.
Human rights experts have said the hijab ban in French basketball is part of a trend of policymakers “weaponising” France’s tradition of laïcité (secularism) to exclude Muslim women and girls from French society, drawing parallels with laws to ban the headscarf and later the abaya (loose-fitting, long-sleeved robe) in public schools, in 2004 and in 2023, respectively.
Campaigners have repeatedly pressured the FFBB to overturn Article 9.3, which was implemented without consultation from basketball clubs.
Several sources told Al Jazeera that the FFBB introduced new regulations after French senators voted to ban the hijab in sporting competitions in January 2022. This set a precedent as attempts by a collective of Muslim women footballers to allow the hijab in French football were struck down.
But Rim-Sarah Alouane, a legal expert on religious freedom, said these regulations “disproportionately impact Muslim women, thus amounting to indirect discrimination”. She added that “the principle of laïcité is meant to ensure state neutrality in religious matters, not to suppress religious expression”.
Timothee Gauthierot is the co-founder of Basket Pour Toutes, a collective focused on advocating for, and encouraging, female Muslim basketball participation [Courtesy: Basket Pour Toutes]
Paris 2024 Olympics – a case of ‘sportswashing’
Paris 2024 will be the first Olympic Games where human rights provisions are included in its Host City Contract.
The contract states that Paris 2024 intends to “guarantee respect for the human rights of all populations placed under its responsibility during the organisation”.
Ahead of the Olympics, Basket Pour Toutes is pushing for both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) to intervene against France’s hijab ban.
FIBA itself had a hijab ban until 2017, when it was overturned after an advocacy campaign. Meanwhile, the IOC allows athletes to wear headscarves in its competitions, but has not responded to letters by Amnesty International, FairSquare and the Sport and Rights Alliance calling for it to ensure France allows its hijab-wearing athletes to play sports.
For these reasons, Shireen Ahmed, an award-winning journalist focused on Muslim women in sports, said that these Olympics are the “biggest case of sportswashing”, as France claims to protect human rights while “being anti-Muslim in its own backyard”.
This issue is “all about choice” Ahmed said, describing how this ban relates to issues around women’s bodily autonomy and shows an attempt by policymakers to dictate what women can or cannot wear.
“Our objection is not with laïcité [secularism], it’s that it’s unevenly applied,” she said, noting how male athletes who wear a religious cross do not face the same scrutiny.
French basketball player Iliana Rupert holds the Olympic torch next to the Paris 2024 Olympics President Tony Estanguet on May 21, 2024. Critics point to the human rights provisions in the Paris 2024 Host City Contract as justification for lifting the nationwide French athlete hijab ban on basketball and football players before the Olympics begin on July 26, 2024 [Valery Hache/AFP]
The trickle-down effects of French basketball’s hijab ban
Meanwhile, the French Federation of Basketball’s ban is having harsh effects on female Muslim athletes in France.
December 4, 2022 was the date that Helene Ba was first told she was banned from playing basketball.
Ba, a 22-year-old law student who grew up in the Paris suburb of Yvelines, recalls that “the most violent thing” on that match day was that the referee told her coach, instead of her, that she couldn’t play.
She said the referee didn’t even mention Article 9.3 – but instead remarked that wearing a hijab was “a problem of danger”.
But, knowing the law, she fought back.
“I said that I wouldn’t take off my hijab,” Ba told Al Jazeera. “FIBA [the world basketball body] authorises it, and this was a local match. It’s violent to ask a woman to take off a piece of cloth. This is a legal claim and we have the right to religion and the freedom to practice sports.”
But Ba said this didn’t stop people in the stands from asking “Are you sure you don’t want to take it off?” She refused to because “faith always comes first”, she said. Ba then left the stadium and her team played without her.
It was then that Ba realised she had to do something about this, not just for her but for all Muslim athletes in France. “When you attack the freedoms of minorities, you attack everyone,” Ba said. “This [Article 9.3] damages the image of basketball.”
Through mutual acquaintances, Ba would meet two pivotal people with whom she would co-found Basket Pour Toutes: coach Timothee Gauthierot and sociologist Haifa Tlili.
After conducting more than 150 interviews with Muslim girls in sports in France, Tlili said that “we do not realise the effects of these traumas” triggered by the hijab ban.
“Many girls have told me: ‘If you take basketball away from me, what do I have left?’,” she said.
As two of the three co-founders of Basket Pour Toutes, Timothee Gauthierot and Helene Ba are committed to inspiring France’s female Muslim players to pursue their basketball dreams [Courtesy: Basket Pour Toutes]
Solidarity and criminalisation on the basketball court
Badiaga Coumba, a 21-year-old who plays in Gauthierot’s club in Noisy-le-Sec, said that since the FFBB’s ruling took effect, she has felt lost, unsure what to do with herself, and has pretty much given up basketball, although she considers her teammates her “second family”.
But unlike Ba, who was one of the only Muslim athletes at her club and who was left out when the hijab ban was implemented, Coumba is in a very diverse club: almost fully gender equal (rare for most basketball clubs), and with many Black and Muslim players.
On a team of 10 girls, there are usually three who wear the hijab, creating a strong sense of solidarity.
When referees started telling coaches that hijab-wearing athletes could not even sit on the bench, most French clubs followed the rules – but not Coumba’s club.
The eligible players went on the pitch, placed the ball on the ground, and refused to play. Referees would quickly grasp what was happening, and call off the match.
Gauthierot, who has stood by his female athletes when they’ve done this, has faced severe legal reprisals by the FFBB, and even the president of the Paris region, Valerie Pecresse. On October 7, 2023, she posted on X, formerly Twitter, “I call on the State to stop leaving competition referees alone in the face of Islamist attempts to destabilise sport grounds”.
After receiving a collective letter from 70 Paris clubs protesting this basketball hijab ban, Pecresse ordered the suspension of “any subsidy to a club violating our charter of laïcité”.
Since most clubs are dependent on public funds, as many as 20 clubs have been heavily impacted and have had to retract their support.
The FFBB has also hit back directly against Gauthierot, fining him 300 euros ($325) and suspending him from all official capacities in basketball for six months from September 2024, in an ongoing case that Gauthierot is legally contesting.
“They say that it [the hijab] can lead to radicalisation, but we really live in harmony,” Gauthierot said. “They [the FFBB] make decisions without knowing us.”
Gauthierot, who is of Guadeloupean origin, cited sports legends who stood up against discrimination as role models, like modern American football’s Colin Kaepernick; or former US runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who gave the Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
“I’ve got nothing to lose,” said Gauthierot, who works in IT and volunteers at the local basketball club. “I’d rather do it without discriminating against girls.”
Badiaga Coumba is one of many French Muslim basketball players trapped between the FFBB hijab ban and their love of basketball [Courtesy: Basket Pour Toutes]Basketball games featuring hijab-wearing and non-hijab-wearing athletes promote an equitable atmosphere at the grassroots level in France [Courtesy: Basket Pour Toutes]
Representation matters, especially at the Olympics
Critics of the hijab ban point out that this is happening while France prepares to host the first Olympic Games to reach full gender parity, making the situation even more alarming.
“By proudly claiming that the Games will be ‘gender equal’, the French authorities are exposing their own hypocrisy of celebrating such alleged advancements while at the same time discriminating against Muslim women and girls through hijab bans in sports,” Amnesty International researcher Anna Blus said.
Researcher Anna Blus represents Amnesty International at a Basket Pour Toutes event [Courtesy: Basket Pour Toutes]
Andrea Florence, director of the Sports & Rights Alliance, highlighted, “It’s the Olympic principle 6 [of the Olympic Charter] that people should enjoy sports without discrimination of any kind. It’s not about the number of people banned, it’s about those who can’t even be included.”
Al Jazeera contacted the FFBB, the French Ministry of Sports, FIBA, and the IOC for comment. Only FIBA replied, stating that “the headgear is allowed in Official Basketball Competitions, including the Olympic Games, in accordance with the Official Basketball Rules”. It did not specify if it would intervene against the FFBB’s hijab ban.
Despite challenging times for the girls from Basket Pour Toutes, they are not losing hope in their fight for justice.
Last April, they organised a massive tournament in Noisy-le-Sec open to all women. Twenty-five teams and 90 girls took part, in what Helene Ba described as an opportunity “to show the FFBB that everything is fine and that we can play without any problems”.
Basket Pour Toutes (Basketball For All) is challenging the French Basketball Federation’s headscarf ban by staging tournaments – like this one in Noisy-le-Sec, in the eastern suburbs of Paris – that promote inclusivity for hijab-wearing players [Courtesy: Basket Pour Toutes][Courtesy: Basket Pour Toutes]
Meanwhile, Diaba Konate – who recognises that she is one of the few Muslim girls in France who had the privilege to move to the US to pursue the sport she loves – is now coming back to her country to pave the way for cultural change in French basketball, and to be closer to family.
She said that no woman should have to move away from home to play sports, and vowed to use her experiences to support others.
“There’s a battle to be fought in France. I want to help the FFBB to deconstruct stereotypes about veiled women as there’s a lot of prejudice,” Konate said. “We don’t want to make that choice [between faith and sport]. We shouldn’t be forced to do these things.”
“Representation matters. It’s important to have role models. You need people [who look] like you to be inspired. I have accomplished everything I wanted – now it’s for the future generations.”
Diaba Konate looks forward to a time when she can play competitive basketball again in France without having to choose between her religious attire and the sport she loves [Zak Krill/Getty Images via AFP]
Sun’s ban ends too late for him to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics but he says he will restart his swimming career.
Disgraced three-time Olympic champion Sun Yang hopes to return to competitive swimming “as soon as possible” after his more than four-year ban for a doping violation ended.
The Chinese freestyler was originally suspended for eight years by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 2020 for smashing vials of blood during a 2018 test, the circumstances of which he still disputes. His suspension from competitive swimming ended on Tuesday.
The ban was reduced on appeal to four years and three months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2021.
“I hope that I’ll be able to pick a competition and return to the starting block as soon as possible,” the 32-year-old said in an interview published by state-run media outlet The Paper.
Sun’s return comes with China’s swimmers under intense scrutiny since it emerged that WADA allowed 23 of them to compete at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, despite testing positive for a banned substance.
WADA accepted China’s explanation that the swimmers unwittingly consumed the substance through food at their hotel.
Sun’s return is too late for him to compete at this summer’s Paris Olympics, but he hinted that he was setting his sights on longer-term goals.
“The Olympics are just a competition for me, they will end, and after they end, there will be another one,” Sun said.
“I am frequently doing some simulated competition tests now that I’ve returned to training… I am constantly trying to recapture that feeling,” he said.
The 2-metre tall (6ft 7in) Sun was the first Chinese swimmer to win Olympic gold, in 400m and 1500m at the 2012 London Games, but has long been a controversial figure in the pool.
Some rivals called him a cheat at the 2016 Rio Olympics and two competitors refused to stand with him on medal podiums at the 2019 world championships.
China’s Sun Yang, centre, holds up his gold medal as silver medallist Australia’s Mack Horton, left, stands away from the podium in protest after the men’s 400m freestyle final at the 2019 World Swimming Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, [Mark Schiefelbein/AP]
Sun was also given a three-month ban in 2014 after testing positive for a banned substance.
“I think compared to other athletes I am very lucky, and I am very grateful and thankful,” Sun said, referring to his past achievements which also include 11 world championship golds from 2011 to 2019.
He said he had felt “very dark” when he initially found out about his second ban, but that his time away from the pool had given him the space to develop other interests.
“When I look back [on the past four years], I think it’s really no big deal,” Sun said.
“In fact, the biggest change in my past four years is that I started a family and now have another half,” he said, referring to his marriage to gymnast Zhang Doudou.
“These four years have added some colour to my life.”
Three years after the Tokyo Olympics, Japan’s Hifumi Abe and his sister Uta want to go for gold again in Paris 2024 Olympics.
Japan’s brother-and-sister Olympic judo champions Hifumi and Uta Abe say they are spurring each other in their bid to defend their titles at this year’s Paris Games.
The siblings won individual golds within an hour of each other at the pandemic-postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, and they are likely to be a force to be reckoned with again in Paris.
Both are four-time world champions, and Hifumi Abe told reporters in Tokyo on Tuesday that he does not want to be outdone by his younger sister this summer.
“I know we are both working hard and we share the same target – that fact alone helps me,” said the 26-year-old.
“When I see her working hard and putting in the effort, it gives me strength and makes me think that I have to work hard too.”
Hifumi beat Georgia’s Vazha Margvelashvili to win the men’s under-66kg Olympic title in Tokyo shortly after Uta claimed the women’s under-52kg gold beating France’s Amandine Buchard.
Japan’s Hifumi Abe (white) competes with Georgia’s Vazha Margvelashvili during their judo men’s 66kg final bout at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games [File: Jack Guez/AFP]
The siblings will again compete on the same day in Paris, and Uta said they will keep an eye on each other’s matches.
“If we both progress through the tournament then that helps support each other,” said the 23-year-old.
“The most important thing is to keep winning so that we can both reach the final and win.”
The Abe siblings followed up their Olympic success by winning world titles in their respective weight classes in 2022 and 2023.
Hifumi said competing at an Olympics away from home for the first time is likely to be his biggest challenge.
“There will be a time difference, so I have to make sure I prepare myself right to be in good shape,” he said.
“With the judo side of it, as long as I prepare myself as I normally do, I’m confident there is no way I will lose.”
Uta Abe celebrates winning the women’s gold medal in the 52kg category during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games [File: Mandi Wright/USA TODAY Sports]
Ashley Uhl-Leavitt landed an opportunity most athletes can only dream of – a chance to compete in the 2024 Olympic Games. While this Florida-based marathon runner has run in some of the most iconic races in the world like the New York City Marathon, this is her first time to compete in the Olympic marathon.
In less than 100 days, athletes and spectators alike will converge in Paris, France, for an event synonymous with bringing the world together regardless of the calibre of global geopolitical tensions throughout the history of the modern Olympiad.
“Hundreds of thousands of people tried to get a handful [marathon] spots. It was such a long shot,” Uhl-Leavitt told Al Jazeera.
But with that blessing comes a hurdle on the track to the games. How to train and cover one’s costs.
“When I’m in marathon builds, it’s very time-consuming,” she said.
She has to fit training in where she can between her two jobs – one as a personal trainer and the other as a bartender in her hometown of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida – roughly 20 miles (32km) from Jacksonville.
To offset the costs of getting to the games, she turned to the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.
Training for this high level of athletics is a full-time job. Athletes also travel to compete in different games to hone their skills in the lead-up to the big day. But since most prospective Olympians have to pay their own way for all this effort, it is a nearly impossible situation having to decide between working or competing.
Only a select few land a lucrative corporate partnership. Allianz Life Insurance Company, for example, is only sponsoring five Olympians and Paralympians (the games for those with disabilities).
There is no salary for athletes training for the Olympics. There are limited stipend opportunities, but only once they have qualified for the games – a long-shot endeavour in itself. While stipends vary, some are as low as a few hundred dollars a month. The training up to that point is out of pocket.
More than 90 percent of all Olympians reported spending as much as $21,700 in competition fees and membership dues in the lead-up to the games. More than a quarter of all US Olympians report making less than $15,000 annually in total income.
As for healthcare, Olympian athletes reported spending as much as $9,200 for out-of-pocket expenses amid injuries and as little as 16 percent were reimbursed, according to a report from the Commission on the State of US Olympics & Paralympics – an independent commission appointed by Congress in 2020 (PDF).
Uhl-Leavitt is one of the many athletes over the years who turned to alternative means to finance their Olympic journey. Another is boxer Jennifer Lozano of Laredo, Texas, who, according to her crowdfunding campaign, is the first in the south Texas town she calls home to get a chance to compete.
Lozano’s training regimen is physically and time intensive – a must for this 21-year-old in her efforts to bring home the gold. She begins every day as early as 6am. She gets a stipend from USA Boxing to cover her day-to-day costs like car payments while training and for travel for the games.
She told Al Jazeera that she had been getting a stipend for the past eight months, before she officially qualified for the team at an international competition in Santiago, Chile, in October 2023. She declined to share the amount and frequency of the stipend.
Before that, though, all costs came out of her pocket and that of her family. She declined to share the dollar figure for those costs as well.
Lozano told Al Jazeera that she’s using the funds from her GoFundMe campaign to cover the costs associated with getting her family and coaches to the games.
Less than the federal poverty line
Financial constraints hit Olympian athletes but not other high-level athletes like those in professional athletic leagues. In sports like American football, even players who don’t play in an official game get paid well. The minimum pay for a player on the practice squad this year in professional American football is $16,800 per week, according to the National Football Leagues’ most recent collective bargaining agreement. As for Major League Baseball – players within their minor leagues are paid a minimum of $60,300 for the 2024 season.
Tokyo 2020 Olympics were delayed by a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic [File: Marko Djurica/Reuters]
While many Olympians do not rake in compensation from their time at the games, the medal winners do. A gold medal finisher walks away with $37,500, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for third-place finishers.
In context, that means that third-place finishers make less than the current federal poverty line for one person. To afford rent in the United States, you’ll need to make more than double what a gold medallist earns at the bare minimum.
The United States has fairly low payouts for Olympic prize money compared with other nations. During the last Olympic Games, Italy offered $213,000 for gold medallists. Singapore offered the equivalent of $737,000 for first-place finishers. This time, Singapore is raising the stakes and will offer first-place winners $1m in prize money. But if history is any indicator, it may not have to pay that out as the island nation has only produced one gold medallist in its history.
“Your lifetime earnings as an Olympic athlete are in the extremely high negative figures. There’s no doubt about that,” said Victor Matheson, professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and the author of Going for the Gold: The Economics of the Olympics.
There has been some momentum to maximise payouts for these athletes, but there has not been much in the last decade. Following the 2016 games, then-President Barack Obama signed a bill into law that barred the IRS from taxing rewards on medals, dubbed the victory tax.
So far, Track and Field is the only sport to offer additional prize money to winners. Earlier this month, World Athletics, the sport’s governing body, announced it would hand out $50,000 in prize money to each of the gold medallists. Track and Field is slated to have 48 different events in the upcoming games.
While prize money helps, it does not address the financial barriers to entry. In part, that is why so many athletes like Uhl-Leavitt have turned to crowdfunding platforms in 2024 before the games.
Training itself is expensive. That’s what drove now-retired sabre fencer Monica Aksamit, who earned a bronze medal in the 2016 games, to start a GoFundMe while training for the 2020 Tokyo games, although it was delayed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the months in the run-up to the Tokyo games, she garnered national headlines in which she explained that it was a choice between training and working. She told the student newspaper at her alma mater, Penn State, that the US Olympic Committee gave her a small stipend of $300 a month. Meanwhile, she spent more than $20,000 on training. Because of the time commitment that Olympic-level training requires, she struggled to find work even at a local grocery store.
Aksamit had agreed to sit down with Al Jazeera in New York. However, she did not show up to the preplanned interview nor could she be reached for rescheduling.
There is some minor help out there for some athletes in a handful of sports. Associations including USA Swimming, US Taekwondo and US Rowing offer small stipends for athletes training for the Olympics primarily after they have qualified for the national team.
Otherwise, options are pretty limited to the few athletes that are able to solidify sponsorships.
Because of these massive financial costs and low likelihood of long-term financial success, there is less incentive for parents to get their children interested in sports to begin with – not just the niche ones.
“Parents pay huge amounts of money in the hopes of getting their kids even just on the varsity team in high school, that elusive college scholarship or the even more elusive slot on a regional or national team and a potential invite to the Olympics. It’s wildly expensive,” Matheson, the economics professor, added.
Only about half of middle-income and only 31 percent of low-income children get involved in athletics, whereas the more high income do at 71 percent, according to the Centers For Disease Control.
This has been a challenge for Olympic athletes and their families for a long time. In 2012, Natalie Hawkins, the mother of iconic gymnast Gabby Douglas, filed for bankruptcy amid the high costs of training.
Well-paid executives
Meanwhile, the Olympic Games are a massive money-maker for several different parties. During every game, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) pools the earnings from ticket sales, advertising sales, and other money spinners. Some of it is redistributed back to host cities and partner organisations including each country’s individual committee after the IOC takes its cut.
Olympic committee execs tend to be well paid but athletes struggle for funds [File: Stephanie Lecocq/Reuters]
That is when, in theory, organisations like the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee divide up the revenue and distribute it on its level to training programmes and athletes.
“Almost certainly too much of it gets eaten up by overpaid administrators and some stuff like that,” Matheson said.
That is what happened stateside.
Sarah Hirshland, the CEO of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, made more than $1.1m in 2022 – the year of the most recent Winter Olympic Games. Meanwhile, the US Olympic committee had a net revenue of $61.6m – the second-highest on record, according to the organisation’s 2022 financial disclosures. It is only second to the Tokyo 2021 games (delayed by a year because of the pandemic), which brought in $104.6m in net income. By comparison, in 2016, the year of the Rio De Janeiro games, $78.5m (the equivalent of $88.9m, adjusted for inflation).
The events also make a lot of money for broadcasters. In the United States, NBC holds the exclusive broadcasting rights for the games. The media company disclosed that it has sold at least $1.2bn in advertisement sales before the games. The broadcaster, which holds exclusive broadcast rights to the Olympics until 2032, expects record revenue.
That’s significantly higher than what other broadcasters nab for other high-profile events that they have exclusive broadcasting rights to. For instance, CBS brought in a record $635m for American football’s premiere event – the Super Bowl.
The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
The biggest names in a handful of sports do end up with lucrative advertising and sponsorship deals, including athletes like swimmer Michael Phelps, who won 28 gold medals over the course of his career, and gymnast Simon Biles, who gained global fame after clinching gold in 2016.
But for most striving athletes, greatness is not about the marginal chance of financial success, but rather a showcase of a key part of who they are.
“Long runs on the weekends are two and a half to three hours, and you’re running an hour or two hours and a half or cross-training every day through the week,” Uhl-Leavitt said. “It definitely does consume your life.”
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
