Canadian health tech entrepreneur boosts Canadian medallists’ money
Canada’s medallists in Paris will get a bump in podium prize money.
A donation by Canadian healthcare technology entrepreneur Sanjay Malaviya of Hespeler, Ont., will make a gold medal worth a total of $25,000, silver $20,000 and bronze $15,000 to athletes.
The 2024 Olympic Games open July 26 and close Aug. 11 followed by the Paralympic Games from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8.
Malaviya has renewed grants of $5,000 per medal, which he gave retroactively in 2022 to Canada’s 130 Olympic and 53 Paralympic medallists in that year’s Beijing’s Winter Games and also in Tokyo’s Summer Games in 2021.
“During COVID, I woke up and read the news early. It was during the last Olympic cycle and an Australian businessman had given $5,000 for every summer Olympic Australian athlete because he was just so happy that the team went to the Olympics and did so well,” he said. “I just wondered, ‘Wow, who is doing that in Canada?’ ”
The continuation of his Team Canada Podium Awards at both the Paris Games and the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy, adds to the $20,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze given to athletes by the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees.
“I really wanted the dollars to go directly to the athletes,” Malaviya said. “I’ve had a lot of calls from Olympians and Paralympians who really appreciated the recognition and acknowledgment. I was overwhelmed by that. I didn’t really expect that.
“It just showed it made a difference for them which in the bottom of my heart was really what I was trying to do.”
For comparison, the U.S Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s “Project Gold” doles out $37,500 (U.S.) for gold, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for bronze.
Malaviya was also a driver behind the recent announcement that Canada’s Paralympic medallists will be financially rewarded for the first time in Paris, and at the same level as Olympic athletes who have received medal bonuses since 2006.
Malaviya committed $4 million (Canadian) to an $8-million endowment fund to sustain medal money for Paralympians into the future.
The 56-year-old founder and chief executive officer of RL Solutions also renewed a $100,000 contribution to NextGen athletes.
“He really, really cares about helping Team Canada athletes on the path to the podium,” said Jacqueline Ryan, chief executive officer of the Canadian Olympic Foundation.
“He is a nation builder, he cares about the role that these athletes play, so he wants to help fund them and make sure that they have all the resources they need on the path to the podium because they inspire us all.”
Between grants for medals and his donation to the Paralympic committee’s foundation for medal money, Malaviya’s committed over $6 million to Canadian athletes since 2022.
“When you think of the calibre of people who compete at that level on the world stage, there’s just no other way to get there than to be resilient, than to be persistent, than to know how to deal with failure, than to get up when you get knocked down and start again,” Malaviya said.