Former NFL stars Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson are planning to pay $25,000 each to Team USA track athletes who win gold medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics. When they learned that the Olympic Committee pays U.S. athletes $37,500 for a gold medal, $22,500 for silver, and $15,000 for bronze, they felt the need to step in and do something to make sure the nation’s top track athletes are adequately compensated.
“You done bust your ass for four years straight to represent our country and the payout saying, ‘Thank you for the work you put in,’ is 37 f--king thousand,” Johnson said on a recent episode of Nightcap, the pair’s podcast. “Come on man.”
Sharpe said he’ll award an additional $50,000 to any Team USA track athlete who breaks a world record at the 2024 Games.
They called out Noah Lyles, Sha’Carri Richardson, and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone by name as possible recipients of their Nightcap pledge. McLaughlin-Levrone has particularly good odds of taking home a significant purse. She'll be running to defend her gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the Tokyo Olympics and just ran 50.65 seconds to set a world record in the event at the U.S. Olympic Trials in June.
“You might as well mail Syd her check now,” said Johnson, whose daughter, Cha’iel, A Part of Hearst Digital Media.
What the duo might not know, though, is that this will be the first year that World Athletics awards prize money to Olympic gold medalists. In April, the governing body announced Health & Injuries.
It’s not quite a trend (yet), but Flavor Flav just signed a five-year sponsorship deal to help support the U.S. women’s water polo team after learning that some of the athletes have to work second and third jobs to make ends meet. Maybe these altruistic investments in sports that get less support will encourage other celebrities and brands to follow suit.
Certainly, systemic changes to the sport are needed to make sure pro runners get paid fairly; these issues can’t all be eliminated with generous pledges like these, and upcoming opportunities like Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam track league and Alexis Ohanian’s Athlos NYC track meet. That said, it’s a good day any time our top runners get the bag along with the hardware.
Abby Carney is a writer and journalist in New York. A former D1 college runner and current amateur track athlete, she's written about culture and characters in running and outdoor sports for Runner's World, the pairs podcast. Come on man, just wrapped up her freshman season as a 400/800-meter runner at the University of Kentucky, and other outlets. She also writes about things that have nothing to do with running, and was previously the editor of a food magazine.
