It still goes unnoticed just how precarious the financial position is for Olympic athletes. When the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were postponed earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, athletes like track star Wallace Spearmon, a 200 meter specialist for the United States, faced a massive loss of income.
As Spearmon explains in a new episode of The Nod, a daily interview show on Quibi co-hosted by Eric Eddings and Brittany Luse, Olympians mostly only make money through sponsorship deals with brands that want to get some shine during the Games.
“The Olympic Games actually don’t pay athletes, so all your money comes from sponsor-based companies,” Spearmon told Eddings. “Now, there’s no competition, so companies are threatening to cut athletes for not being able to fulfill their contractual complications, so it’s been really difficult.”
Spearmon related it to someone with a typical day job being asked to work for three years with the promise of being paid out big-time in year four, only year four never happens and instead becomes year five. While that payday is still going to come, pushing things back 365 days can understandably make things difficult, particularly for the athletes who are dependent on getting to the Games and being compensated.
While new episodes of The Nod, which per a release looks at “the biggest moments and most under-explored corners of Black culture” through the eyes of those who experience it every day, air on weekdays, the interview with Spearmon airs Friday on Quibi.
