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The Beijing Olympics marks the first time Canada's athletes will receive cash for medals. A gold will be worth $20,000, a silver $15,000 and a bronze $10,000. As of Wednesday, no Canadian athlete had cashed in yet. Rumball and Mandoli are hoping they'll qualify for a cheque with a podium performance in the women's eight on Sunday. While both women say they didn't become Olympic athletes for the money, they admit every little bit helps. "We've come to this level for the pure love and joy of the sport," said Rumball, a native of Fredericton. "Anything above that is a bonus. But I think it's excellent for the next generation of athletes that we would have this kind of incentive program." The Canadian Olympic Committee announced last November that it would offer incentives for medals through its Athletes Excellence Fund. The move was part of the organization's decision to concentrate its efforts more toward achieving results at Olympic Games and less on spreading money thinly across a wide range of programs. The COC set a goal to finish atop the medal table at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and to be among the top 16 countries in Beijing. Canada won just 12 medals four years ago in Athens - three gold, six silver, and three bronze. Canada is not the first country to offer cash incentives at the Olympics. Several other countries have written cheques - in some cases very hefty ones - to their medallists. An athlete from the Philippines who wins gold in Beijing, for example, will head home with 15 million pesos (C$360,000), while a Russian gold medallist will collect C$50,000 for gold from the government, plus lucrative bonuses from various private sources that could add up to as much as C$500,000 in housing, cars and cash. http://www.tsn.ca/olympics/story/?id=246198&lid=sublink08&lpos=topRelated_olympics
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