Speaking about her mother and her upbringing, Tokyo Olympics silver medalist Gabby Thomas said in July 2024, “She grew up in true poverty … we were low income…”. This was just weeks before she would win 3 gold medals at the Paris Olympics alone. One might envision that after all this, the financial strain on the Olympian must have gone away. After all, Gabby is also one of the faces for Althon with one of the biggest cash prizes in athletics. But it seems that is not the case. As Gabby has made evident, money is still a big issue in her life.
After all, trying to compete in the Olympics doesn’t come cheap. For some, it might hit hundreds of thousands to maintain peak fitness for the grandest stage. Yet in Gabby’s case, it wasn’t just the high costs that come with being an Olympian. No, there’s something else as well. And she was here to explain those on the latest episode of the Networth and Chill Podcast on March 12. So what did she say?
While discussing the money side of her track and field career, she was asked how much she has had to spend overall since she began her track and field journey. It started smoothly for her as she shared that till college, she was quite taken care of. Even during the school days, her expenses were almost nothing. However, everything changed as the Harvard alumni transitioned from college to pro.
In fact, the 28-year-old gave us a glimpse of how it generally works for a pro athlete in track and field. The Paris Olympics 200-meter gold winner mentioned that a pro athlete first and foremost needs sponsorship or endorsements to sustain their career. Why? It’s simple, she elaborated. “There is no salary for us once you’re a professional runner. There is no league that you’re going into where you get a salary.”
So how do professional runners get their paychecks? Well, win. And hope to win so much that they get sponsors behind that. Because that will be the only income or financial source for most of them. Gabby Thomas mentions, “You have to pay a coach, you have to pay an agent, you have to pay for your travel to meets, you have to pay for a massage therapist, and access to a weightlifting facility.” She also takes her time to explain what happens if someone doesn’t have sponsors.
She says, “If you don’t have that (sponsorship), all of that you have to pay for out of pocket.” This is an extremely big issue for up-and-coming runners and Olympic hopefuls since the expenses needed to make it big-time aren’t ones that can be supported easily. However, for Gabby, it wasn’t particularly hard. Since December 2018, she has been with New Balance, who have helped facilitate her medal-winning journey.
She said, “I had sponsorships that would help support that endeavor. So New Balance was my first one, and they helped me get to the Olympics, and they helped me pay for everything.” And yet, despite New Balance backing her up, wait till you hear how much she had to spend herself! Gabby continued, “That journey to my first Olympics in Tokyo, I had to invest somewhere between 50,000 and $100,000, just paying a coach, paying an agent, paying for travel to meets, so I mean that’s a sizable amount.”
To have a sponsorship and still need to spend in the ballpark of $100k is just outrageous. Do you know what $100k can buy you? A house. A proper house you can call home. It makes you wonder how expensive it must be to afford a quality coach and a quality gym facility with state-of-the-art equipment and technology. The best nutritionist, the top-class trainers, and anything else that helps you nail the race.
And mind you, this was 2021, when the world was still gripped with COVID-19. The economy had slowed down to almost a standstill. Shelling out that amount of money shows how much it meant to Gabby Thomas. And it worked. In Tokyo. And definitely in Paris. For pro athletes, financing their careers has been a challenge. Many times, it has been a difficult struggle for the bare minimum, as we will see next.
Gabby Thomas is not the only one underpaid for her dreams
Money in track and field has always been an issue. For Freddie Crittenden, the money for the Paris Olympics came through working jobs. He couldn’t land shoe-brand sponsorship for himself and had to work different jobs, like in retail at a GameStop shop or in a warehouse, and also as a substitute teacher for several years, just to realize his athletic aspirations.
It has been so challenging that some athletes have taken a stand against it. Trevor Bassitt had enough of the free shoutouts for the big brands (wearing branded apparel without being sponsored) and decided to join the Unsponsored Project of Bandit Running in 2023. And he wasn’t alone. 34 athletes joined him in wearing unsponsored gear as a revolution, which includes Courtney Okolo and Brandee Johnson.
There have been other variations of such an initiative. Not exactly unbranded, but to support the athletes, the Tracksmith Amateur Support Program helped the athletes who couldn’t land a proper deal with a quarterly stipend, training shoes, and apparel. These include Mason Ferlic, Val Constien, Hobbs Kessler, Chris Bailey, and a few others.
The program is run by Nick Willis, a five-time Olympian and two-time medalist in the 1500 meters. For him, it is a way to support the dreams that would otherwise remain unrealized. As he said to Run in the July 1st, 2024, article: “We want this to be a bridge or a launch pad until their next phase, and so we hope those who do have success can have bigger and better opportunities.”
However, one paralympian gave a different viewpoint of the problem, which raises a new problem. Stef Reid posted on Instagram in May 2024, “I would say the money is there, and that’s because the IOC shares its broadcast revenues across all summer sports.” But then, where is it all going? Reid tried to imply it’s just that the money is not going in the right channel and for the right people.
The IOC distributed its 540 million revenue across the 32 federations. But why hasn’t the trickle-down effect worked for the US track and field stars? She reiterated, “My point is simply that there is a difference between not being able to afford something and choosing to invest elsewhere.” There is no doubt that track and field needs financial reform, and maybe the revolution is here.
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