Have you ever wondered how much a Canadian Olympic medal winner earns?
The 2022 Beijing Winter Games are over on February 20, and Canada has been performing so-so in the medal race.
After years of training, outside of bragging rights and a place on the podium, what does a medal win amount to for a Canadian Olympian?
Canada has what the Canadian Olympic Committee calls the Athlete Excellence Fund (AEF), a support and reward program that provides Canadian athletes with performance rewards.
A gold medal earns a Canadian Olympian $20,000, a silver medal is worth $15,000, and a bronze medal earns an athlete $10,000 in Canadian dollars.
The program was first introduced in 1997, and as of 2003, it awarded $5,000 to any Canadian Olympian who finished in the top five.
It pales in comparison to what athletes around the world earn for winning an Olympic medal.
US athletes earn almost double what a Canadian makes for winning a gold medal.
The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee says that gold earns an American athlete approximately $47,000, silver earns $28,000, and a bronze medal is worth just over $19,000 in Canadian dollars.
How does the rest of the world stack up?
Olympic athletes from Singapore actually make the most out of all the countries who compete, earning approximately $944,000 Canadian for a gold medal win. According to Forbes, Taiwan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Kazakhstan also offer six-figure payouts.
Based on the medal count at the Beijing Olympic Games, the AEF won’t be paying Canadian Olympians as much as they have in previous events, as Canada is on the worst Olympic gold medal pace in 30 years.
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