Gold for Gold: Canada to pay Olympic medal winners

Funding is directed to four main areas:
- High Performance Preparation
The Excellence Fund helps support the training of Canadian Olympic hopefuls. The fund will support sport medicine initiatives that allow our athletes to have the best health practitioners working with them, and fund important research into athletic performance that will advance physiological understanding of how our athletes push themselves to the highest level of achievement.
- Athlete Assistance
The Excellence Fund supports Canadian Olympians by providing direct financial assistance to athletes based on earned performance and the demonstrated capacity to earn podium results at Olympic Games.
- Coaching
The Excellence Fund supports Canadian coaches. Coaching is a critical element of athlete performance and success. The fund will play a vital role in attracting and retaining the best coaches in the world, and support additional education and mentoring programs.
- Sport Centres
The Excellence Fund supports Canadian Olympic training facilities. The fund will directly benefit Canada's six regional sport centres for the purchase of essential training and testing equipment ensuring Canadian athletes access to world class training equipment and facilities.

Athletes will receive up to $20,000 per medal at the Games, with the highest amount paid to those who win gold.

Offering an incentive program to the best performers has been debated — and rejected — in Canada for over two decades as Canadian athletes watched other countries reward their athletes with varying amounts of money for gaining medals.

However, the COC decided recently to concentrate its efforts more on achieving results at Olympic Games and less on spreading money thinly across a wide range of programs.

The committee believes it has found the right mix of training assistance and cash incentives with its new Athlete Excellence Fund, says COC president Michael Chambers.