Lausanne (AFP) - The International Olympic Committee, which has been under growing pressure to introduce prize money to the Olympics, on Wednesday announced it was setting up a grant for every athlete who takes part in the Games.

The programme was adopted on the opening day of the IOC annual session in Lausanne, where the body also approved amendments to its Olympic Charter, as well as changes to its process for evaluating potential hosts.

While the Olympics have long since dropped the requirement that athletes are amateurs, the IOC had, until Wednesday, been reluctant to pay competitors.

“Every athlete at the Olympic Games will be eligible for a new $10,000 (8,800 euros) ‘Fit for the Future Olympian Grant’,” said the IOC on its website, adding that the total fund would be worth $140mn for each four-year Olympic cycle.

“All Olympians, no matter where they’re from doesn’t matter where they finish,” would be entitled to the grant, said the chair of the Athletes’ Commission Pau Gasol, during a press conference at the IOC Session in Lausanne.

Gasol, a former Spanish basketball star, added that the payment would be “acknowledging the importance and relevance of being an Olympian, participating and representing your sport and to your country in the Games.”

“It’s not prize money,” he stressed. He also said Paralympians would not be eligible.

The IOC said athletes who competed at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games this year would be eligible to apply once the application process had been set up.

- ‘Seed money’ -

President Kirsty Coventry has consistently opposed such a suggestion.

On Wednesday, she said that the money for the grants would not cut into the shares of IOC revenue that go to National Olympic Committees or internationals sports federations.

She said the IOC had decided the $10,000 figure “was an acceptable amount everywhere that would allow for someone to start something or have it as a little bit of seed money.”

Gasol, a former National Basketball Association star, said NBA players, National Hockey League players and tennis stars would be eligible for the grants.

Coventry’s opposition to prize money has drawn a hostile response from some former athletes.

South African Roland Schoeman, like Coventry a former swimmer, launched a petition calling for the resignation of the president and the entire executive board.

“The IOC generates billions. That value comes from the athletes. It is time to demand accountability,” he wrote.

World Athletics broke with tradition and introduced prize money at the 2024 Paris Games – each gold medal winner in the 48 track and field events receiving $50,000 – relay runners sharing the prize pot.

“Does this undermine the amateur ethic?” said World Athletics president Sebastian Coe at the time of the announcement.

“We’re now operating in a completely different planet from when I was competing, so it is very important that the sport recognises that change in landscape.”

The IOC meanwhile made several changes to its charter, including a new paragraph emphasising its political neutrality.

“The IOC’s role is: to apply neutrality at all times, free from governmental, cultural, societal or economic pressure,” reads the addition.

Asked if this greater emphasis on staying out of politics was paving the way for the return of Russia to the Olympic movement, Coventry replied that the IOC did not know how the change they had just made would play out.

“We haven’t had much time to then sit down and discuss a way forward. So give us a little bit of time to see now how we’re going to implement,” she said. “So, let us do that and then we’ll come back to you.”