My personal opinion:Hawkpeter wrote: ↑Fri May 29, 2026 7:31 am If the Enhanced Games does have some sort of lasting legacy, it might actually be in how it has ignited dialogue regarding prize money and payments to athletes.
Since then, I've seen a lot of athletes on social media criticizing her comment, and calling for not just prize money, but appearance fees, name, image and likeness access, and more - I feel this is misguided though.
Currently, around 20% of revenue goes to the National Olympic Committees and Sport federations. This is the source of funds in most cases that eventually goes to support athletes under the current system. If there is to be criticism of the system, it surely has to be directed at the NOC's and Sporting Federations whom the IOC actually recognises and deals with. I can't imagine the IOC ever directly having financial arrangements with 10,000+ athletes at a Summer Games every 4 years, in turn, increasing the size of the pie for the NOC's and Sport Feds does not necessarily mean it will flow on to the athletes.
If people want change, they need to elect better leadership at the NOC and Sport Federation levels.
We can all agree that we love sport, certainly enough to discuss it on a tiny irrelevant forum. However if we are to be honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge a fundamental contradiction between the aspects of weightlifting and sport that we love, and what actually fuels it on a material basis.
1. Sport at an international and particularly Olympic level, is a relatively cost effective form of political propaganda. That is why any (every) government with sizeable elite sport funding spends money on it, from east to west, north to south.
The IOC is a political body that aims to enrich itself and launder the politics of those who invest into it, above all else. The politicians of the IOC, as the rich and powerful, benefit from neoliberalism and its implementation in sport.
The profits from the mass revenue of sponsorships, broadcasting rights and so on are privatized to the rich and powerful in the IOC and their business partners. The costs are socialized to the host country and particularly to the host cities and inhabitants of said cities.
Look at what happened to Rio de Janeiro since 2016. "Urban redevelopment" to get ready for the Olympics meant gentrification of urban areas, the privatization of public spaces and the displacement of the already poor and struggling. The consequences of the 2016 Rio Olymipcs was a disaster for the local people.
2. The problem of athlete funding is simple. They are laborers who are not being fairly compensated for their labor because the IOC, the NOCs and the governments want big pieces of the pie. Everything is individual accountability, there is nothing wrong with the system. As Margaret Thatcher said ""There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families".
Instead of athletes having any ownership over the organizations that pay them, or even being paid livable wages by said organizations with some exceptions (e.g. China), athletes are pushed to become an isolated, atomized individual entrepreneur.
The athlete-entrepreneur, whose side gig (besides athletics) is seeking sponsorships, odd jobs and so on, is held up as a beacon of "work ethic" to obscure the reality of the structural inequality. It's not so different to the gig economy, where delivery/taxi drivers are paid as "entrepreneurs" so that the companies they work for don't have to pay even a pittance of a minimum wage.
The point of systems like this is that some athletes can be well paid, but that most will not be.
3. Electoralism can and does make a difference at a local level, where vested interests are relatively few and material changes relatively small. Some egos clash here and there, it is what it is. But representative democracy does not allow for the participation of those at the base, especially in situations where there are different representatives who have their own vested interests and none of whom represent the interests of their base.
A politician is beholden to whomever holds resources (funding, means for enforcement, etcetc). Otherwise, the politicians laws, policies and so on do not have any material impact. Laws and policies are only ideas, and ideas do not change people's lives. People do not eat ideas, ideas do not shield people from the rain above or from violence in front. It is material enforcement that determines what laws exist in practice, whether or not they are written in legislature.
These structural changes cannot occur, unless there is a significant pressure and impetus that force the old system to die and a new system to grow.
If athletes want real, tangible and lasting change, whether at IOC/NOC/sporting federation level, they need to take collective action. The only meaningful power they have is withholding their labor. There can be no production of sport, without the laborers (athletes, commentators, producers etc).
4. Tangentially, neoliberalism and the privatization of sport is literally the the the reason why grassroots sports investment from governments is nearly non existent in neoliberal countries. The neoliberal emphasis on elite performance, efficiency and profitability (for the top) means that investment only happens for those who are at the top. Even cheap sports such as weightlifting, running, and so on become a privilege only for those who are wealthy enough to afford it.
On the other hand, other governments have not just promoted but put structures in place to increase sports participation as a public health measure. Thomas Sankara for example, instituted that public servants must engage in exercise (running, walking, football) for two hours on Tuesday and Thursday at 16:00. This was of course, a very cheap way to maintain citizens' health and reduce medical spending. However, I could see the rich and powerful hating how unproductive this is.
