Majority of Oz Olympic swimmers 'surviving on minimum wages'

Sydney, Aug 11(ANI): Australian swimmer Daniel Kowalski, who won a gold medal at the Sydney Olympic, has slammed the swimming authorities for not taking proper financial care of athletes, claiming that most of the current professional swimmers are surviving on minimum wages .

Despite the huge amounts of Federal Government funds spent on swimming and a salary close to 500,000 dollars a year for Australian Olympic Committee chief John Coates, most of the Australian swim team survive on less than the minimum wage.

Kowalski was caught up in a dispute with Swimming Australia before the London Games after officials decided to pay the 47 swimmers 10,000 dollars each out of the organisation's 5.9 million dolalrs sponsorship money and offer bonuses of up to 15,000 dollars extra for world-beating performances.

"Of the 47 Australian swimmers in London, 36 made less than the minimum wage. Most have to survive on less than $20,000 a year," The Courier Mail quoted Kowalski, as saying.

"The swimmers did not need the cash incentives. The chance at swimming in the Olympics was the incentive but we wanted a fairer share of the sponsorship and television money so that the swimmers could support themselves in the lead up to London," he added.

"Now they have to meet those living expenses and achieve their goal to be the No.1 swimming team in the world at the 2016 Olympics," he said.

Kowalski also revealed the results of a survey of the Australian swim team, which showed 42 per cent were studying, 24 per cent were working and 30 per cent were doing both.

A third of them were training 30-35 hours a week and the rest at least 20-25 hours. (ANI)