Winning a gold medal at the Olympics and standing on the podium as your national anthem blares out must be one of the greatest feelings in the world. If you know that it also comes with more than £20,000 then it must be even sweeter.
South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) have revealed that they hope to head to Rio this summer for the Olympics and beat their record from London four years ago.
In the English capital in 2012 the South African team came away with six medals, three of which were golds, but this time around Sascoc revealed that they were after 10 medals and will be paying handsomely the athletes who manage to get their hands on them, presumably not by stealing them from other athletes in the Village.
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Those winning a gold medal will receive around £26,000, 500,000 rand, silver medalists will be heading home with an extra £13,000 and bronze medalists will be given around £5,200.
Sascoc president Gideon Sam sounded very optimistic about the chances of their 139 person team saying, "We made it a point, many years ago, that this country can be a force to be reckoned with on the world staged of sport."
In London Chad le Clos and Cameron van der Burgh picked up swimming golds and the men's coxless fours also won gold whilst Le Clos added a silver medal to his haul and was joined by Caster Semenya's 800m second place and Bridgitte Hartley picked up the country's only bronze medal in the Canoeing.
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(Via EWN)
Featured Image Credit:Topics: south africa