Sudbury
Starting with the Paris 2024 Games, Paralympians will receive $20,000 for winning gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze. Paralympic athletes and coaches in northern Ontario are welcoming this change.
Athletes who reach the podium in the Paralympics will now receive the same amount of money as Olympic athletesCBC News
· Posted: Jan 27, 2024 7:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 7 hours ago
Para nordic skier Collin Cameron has won multiple medals at the Paralympics. Now athletes like Cameron will also get paid when they reach the podium. (Ng Han Guan/Associated Press/File)A new plan to compensate Canadian Paralympic medalists is long overdue, according to some Paralympians and coaches from northern Ontario.
Starting with the Paris 2024 Games, Paralympians will receive $20,000 for winning gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze. That is equal to the amount Canadian Olympians receive.
“I think that’s a huge step and the right direction for some equality within Paralympic and Olympic sports in our country,” said Collin Cameron. a Para nordic skier and Paralympic medalist from Sudbury.
“We were kind of a little bit behind in that compared to a lot of other countries in the world as far as recognizing the achievements of Paralympic medalists.”
Cameron said athletes don’t get into Para sports for the money, but new incentives for medalists will be a big help to elite athletes who dedicate their lives to their sport.
“It’s a pretty large amount of money, even for a bronze medal,” Cameron said.
“I mean that kind of money helps relieve a lot of financial burden that athletes in high performance sports have. Just within, you know, nutrition needs, medical needs all the way down to basic bills that they have.”
Cameron said the current financial climate has made it more difficult for Paralympians to land corporate sponsorship deals, so any extra source of income is a big help.
The Paralympic Foundation of Canada created an initial $8-million endowment to pay Canadian Paralympic medalists at future games.
Former Paralympic athlete and swim coach Tom Hainey says new money available to athletes who reach the podium will help keep people in their respective sports longer. (Kris Ketonen/CBC)Tom Hainey, a swimming coach and former Paralympic athlete from Atikokan, said he wasn’t surprised when he heard medalists would now be compensated.
“This is something that’s been talked about for a long time,” he said.
Hainey said there’s been a recent push for equality across all sports, including initiatives like the new Professional Women’s Hockey League, which compensates the players better than they have been in the past.
He said the new money for medalists probably won’t get more people involved in Para sport, but it will help keep high-performance athletes active in their respective sports longer.
Hainey said he probably would have competed longer had similar funding been available when he was a Paralympian in the 1980s and 1990s.
Patti Kitler, a Para nordic ski coach from Sudbury, said that when Cameron won three medals at the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games he got some congratulations and a bit of money someone had donated to Nordic Canada.
She said the disparity between what Paralympic and Olympic athletes received for reaching the podium has long been unfair.
She said it was welcome news when she learned there would now be parity between the two groups of athletes.
“So when it came out today, it was like, finally a fair system, right?” she said.
With files from Warren Schlote
