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So THAT'S How Much You Get For Winning an Olympic Medal In Rio

It's still nowhere near what football players or cricketers earn.
Modern pentathlete Chloe Esposito's gold medal just got a little bit more valuable. And she didn't know till we told her!
AFP/Getty Images
Modern pentathlete Chloe Esposito's gold medal just got a little bit more valuable. And she didn't know till we told her!

Twenty-thousand dollars for gold medallists, $15,000 for silver medallists and $15,000 for our bronzed Aussies. That's the cash bonus from the Australian Olympic Committee for members of our Olympic team who won medals at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

Which kind of sounds like a lot, then doesn't, then does again. Anyway, it all helps our Olympians, many of whom are far from household names despite their Rio success.

The Huffington Post Australia contacted Chloe Esposito (pictured above), who won a fantastic come-from-behind gold medal in modern pentathlon, and you won't believe this. She didn't even know yet!

"That's awesome. That is so good," she said. "That will help 110 per cent."

Chloe and the rest of you might be interested to know that the money is made available under the 2017 Medal Incentive Funding (MIF) program, and will be paid from January. It should also be noted that the tax-free payments won't personally cost you a cent, as the AOC is a sponsor-funded body, not a taxpayer-funded body.

If an athlete won a medal as part of a team sport or relay team in a sport like swimming, they still receive the full allotment.

"The funding allows us to fully focus on our training without needing to pick up extra work to help subsidise our training needs" said ruby sevens gold medallist Charlotte Caslick, who this week was named the international sevens rugby player of the year.

"This medal funding helping goes straight back into the kitty, for training and travel," said shooting gold medallist Catherine Skinner.

"It helps to pay off credit cards and travel costs. For a lot of athletes, we are training when we could be working so this funding helps to motivate us to go ahead and keep training. We are prioritising sport over work and monetary gain, so this is really great support and help."

She's woohoo-ing all over again now.
Getty Images
She's woohoo-ing all over again now.

Skinner, 26, was very much Australia's surprise gold medallist in Rio, and in fact recorded her first ever international first-placed finish in winning gold. She said her goal was always a medal, not money, but that the funding bonus "feels like recognition of hard work.

"It's the icing on the cake," she said.

Australia won 29 medals in Rio -- eight gold, 11 silver and 10 bronze -- and the total MIF payments of $1.08 million will be shared among 71 athletes.

The AOC has also announced additional funding of $20,000 to new surfing world champ Taylor Wright, as well as $20,000 to Skateboarding champion Shane O'Neill, whose sports are among five new sports to debut at the Tokyo 2020 Games.

Some of our top Winter Olympic athletes will also receive a funding boost in the lead-up to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the AOC announced on Friday.

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