Olympic gold medalists to receive bonuses

Athletes who contributed to China's unprecedented gold medal haul will receive cash rewards, state media reported.

Gold medalists will be awarded a tax-free incentive of 350,000 yuan (34,735 euros), almost twice what gold medalists received for the Athens Games. The amount also represents a massive increase from the 6,000 yuan (595 euros) given to gold medalists in the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

The report from Beijing News did not mention if silver and bronze medalists will also receive rewards.

According to China Daily, the reward that gold medalists will receive is only a fraction of the cost of their training. Liu Peng, China's sports chief, said on Sunday that the country's average investment in each of the 51 gold medals won in Beijing was about 15.7 million yuan (1.56 million euros a year). China invests about 800 million yuan (79.4 million euros) in sports every year.

China's top performance at the Beijing Olympics won't affect its sports program, Liu said. Sports will continue to receive the same amount of funding from sport-related lotteries, he said.

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