Re: Grace Fu, you useless cunt, you should read this. Our Olympic rower has to use sa
australian and american olympic medalists living on minimum wage jobs,most people think olympic champions become rich and famous but few rarely do.....unless u are 22 times gold medal winner like michael phelps or world fastest man usian bolt.
AUSTRALIA spent $38 million on swimming in the lead-up to Alicia Coutts winning her Olympic relay gold medal in London but our most successful competitor at the Games will soon be back cleaning out cat litter trays.
Despite the massive amounts of Federal Government funds spent on the sport and a salary close to $500,000 a year for Australian Olympic Committee chief John Coates, most of the Australian swim team survive on less than the minimum wage.
For two years, Brisbane-born Coutts has worked part-time at the RSPCA shelter in the Canberra suburb of Weston to finance her gruelling training schedule.
The 24-year-old will leave London next week with one gold, one bronze and three silver more medals than most countries have collected and despite earning close to $100,000 in medal bonuses from London, she will return to her part-time job with an eye to the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Even though Swimming Australia collected $5.9 million in corporate sponsorships and $8 million in Australian Sports Commission grants last year, Sydney Olympic gold medallist Daniel Kowalski says most of the Australian team faced stormy waters on their way to the London Aquatic Centre.
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"Of the 47 Australian swimmers in London, 36 made less than the minimum wage," said Kowalski, the boss of the swimmers union.
"Most have to survive on less than $20,000 a year."
Kowalski was involved in a bitter dispute with Swimming Australia in the lead-up to London after officials decided to pay the 47 swimmers $10,000 each out of the organisation's $5.9 million sponsorship money and offer bonuses of up to $15,000 extra for world-beating performances.
"The swimmers did not need the cash incentives,'' Kowalski said.
"The chance at swimming in the Olympics was the incentive but we wanted a fairer share of the sponsorship and television money so that the swimmers could support themselves in the lead up to London. Now they have to meet those living expenses and achieve their goal to be the No.1 swimming team in the world at the 2016 Olympics.''
Kowalski said a survey of the Australian swim team showed 42 per cent were studying, 24 per cent were working and 30 per cent were doing both. A third of them were training 30-35 hours a week and the rest at least 20-25 hours.
Kowalski said he believed the reason women tended to dominate the swimming medals for Australia was that many promising male athletes were being lured away to other sports such as football and cricket where the earnings potential was far greater.
Samantha Riley, who won Olympic silver and bronze in Barcelona and Atlanta, said swimming had always been a sport that taxed competitors and their families heavily from a young age with early morning starts.
"I was lucky when I was swimming that I had good sponsors," she said.
"But it's not a sport you would ever go into thinking you will make a lot of money."