Athletes who competed in the Beijing Olympics will receive monetary compensation in lieu of prize cars.
This is due to the fact that in the current situation, foreign car companies cannot provide Russian athletes with the necessary number of cars, Match TV reports.
The Olympians Support Fund confirmed this information to RBC and commented on the amount of the payments.
In light of the current situation, the Fund’s management has decided to replace cars with cash grants to the champions and prizewinners of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games in Beijing 2022. Their size is comparable to payments from the state. We are not making any statements about the situation with foreign car manufacturers,” said the Fund.
It should be noted that, in addition, the winners and prizewinners will receive previously established payments from the Government of the Russian Federation: 4 million rubles for a gold medal, 2.5 million rubles for silver and 1.7 million rubles for bronze.
Beijing, 2022 Olympic Games. Closing ceremony, fireworks at the National Stadium “Bird’s Nest”
The tradition of awarding high-quality foreign cars to Olympiad participants has existed in the Olympians Support Fund since 2006. In the early years, Lexus, BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz were awarded and since 2016 the BMW brand is back and has not lost its special Olympic status until recently. Since then, only Russian-made cars have been awarded.
The “gift pool”, as a rule, consisted of more than a hundred cars. As an example: in 2018, the total cost of X6, X5 and X4 crossovers prepared for the participants of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang was about 200-300 million rubles. In 2020, the gold medalists of the Tokyo Olympics received a BMW X5 and the award winners a BMW X3.
In 2022, at the Olympic Games in China, which took place from February 4 to 20, our team won 32 medals: 6 gold, 12 silver and 14 bronze. According to the predictions, the athletes could also get cars of the Bavarian brand this year.
- In early March 2022, BMW announced it would stop assembling cars with a Russian partner, the Avtotor plant in Kaliningrad.
- “Driving” can be read in Viber.