If you’ve ever watched an Olympic podium ceremony and thought, “Wow, must be nice,” you’re not alone. But the truth is far less glamorous than the gold glinting under those stadium lights. Behind every medal is a paper trail of budgets, grants, sponsorships and support staff invoices. Somewhere in a government office, there’s a spreadsheet that makes the Minister of Sport choke on a coffee.

At the end of 2024, Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie revealed that South Africa spent just under R30 million sending Team SA to the 2024 Paris Olympics. That price tag covered 146 athletes, plus the technical and logistical battalion needed to get them from Polokwane, Pietermaritzburg, and Plumstead to Paris (and hopefully onto the podium). The return on investment was six medals, and only one of them gold.

New Zealand, for the sake of comparison, took home 20 medals, of which 10 were gold. They sent more athletes than us, sure, but not that many more – 195 vs. our 146.

In response, McKenzie has launched Project 300, a plan to double our Olympic team size by 2028. Lotto, SuperSport, and a few other unnamed corporate players have already been tapped for funding. The talent search to drum up these team members will happen in every corner of the country, including rural villages where the nearest training “facility” is comprised of a dusty soccer pitch and a dream.

It’s an expensive gamble. And it raises a question that South Africa has been trying to answer for years: what does it really cost to build an Olympian?

The price of potential

You might think that world-class athleticism is something you’re either born with or you’re not – some combination of genetics, grit, and a coach shouting “HARDER!” from the sidelines. But the truth is more complicated (and more costly).

At the elite level, talent alone gets you almost nowhere. Funding is the invisible scaffolding holding up every podium success. Without money, athletes scrape by in the gaps between training shifts, part-time work, and whatever side hustle pays for petrol to get to physio. With money, athletes enjoy what wealthier nations consider non-negotiable: nutritionists, psychologists, physiologists, specialist coaches, sports scientists, recovery tech, and international competition exposure.

Think of athlete development like a Jenga tower. Every missing block, from diet and rest to coaching and equipment, makes the structure wobblier. Wealthy nations start with a perfectly aligned tower. Smaller economies start halfway through the game, and someone’s already taken out all the centre blocks.

And then there’s the brutal catch-22: to get funding, you must perform. But to perform, you need funding. It’s a system that rewards the already-successful and punishes the promising-but-poor. Many South African athletes know this tension intimately. When your stipend depends on your last race time, every training session carries the weight of your livelihood.

The Olympic arms race

The world’s biggest sporting nations spend big in their pursuit of Olympic glory. The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee threw $327 million at athlete development in 2022. The UK spent the equivalent of over R7 billion ahead of Tokyo 2020. These programmes include everything from training technology to psychological support and even marketing. 

Then there’s the second category of spending: the rewards. Once the medals are won, the prize money kicks in, and this is where things get eyebrow-raising. Hong Kong pays an athlete R14.7 million for a gold medal. They don’t do badly over in Serbia either, with a cool R4.1 million. Some countries even hand out property portfolios! Poland’s gold medallists at Paris 2024 enjoyed diamonds, holidays, artwork, and actual apartments in Warsaw. 

Research finds a strong correlation between elite sport funding and international success. Countries investing heavily in facilities, coaching, and athlete support tend to feature more often on podiums. That’s why wealthier countries with well-financed sports programmes still dominate the medal tables.

But that relationship, while statistically significant, also reveals exceptions. Some lower-income nations continue to achieve rare but remarkable success, often punching above their “expected” weight. This suggests that performance depends on more than just bankroll: sometimes, environmental, cultural, physiological and personal factors tip the balance.

Take long-distance running, for instance. Most elite athletes in these events come from high-altitude or rural areas, where daily life involves long endurance tasks like running to school, walking for kilometres to get to a shop, and growing up with an oxygen-rich environment. For many, those conditions deliver a built-in advantage that no high-tech gym can simulate.

Who pays, and who profits?

That said, structural support cannot be ignored. Studies of elite-sport funding models show countries achieve more consistent results when they prioritise sustained investment over hit-and-miss cycles. Well-funded national programmes generally deliver better coaching, injury prevention, recovery protocols, sports science support, and logistical backing, which is especially important in high-performance sports and for athletes outside globally dominant disciplines.

The absence or weakness of those systems in poorer countries often means talent goes unrefined, potential remains unrealised, and consistency fades. For athletes who lack stable funding, sacrifices may build discipline, but they seldom build a career.

So who pays to build a champion? And who benefits when the medals come home?

The answers are messy. In wealthy countries, government-backed systems invest heavily in athlete development because sporting success is good national PR. Gold medals translate into international prestige, influence, and a type of soft power. In nations with fewer resources, the funding question becomes a tug-of-war between government budgets, private sponsors, athletes’ personal finances, and pure willpower. South Africa finds itself in the awkward middle. We’re not broke – but we’re also not the UK.

R30 million feels like a lot until you compare it to the countries we’re trying to compete with. And while sport is a powerful unifier in South Africa (ask anyone who had a Springbok flag painted on their face in 2023), we are also a nation with some urgent fires to put out – sometimes quite literally. 

On one hand, Project 300 is a credible idea: a nationwide search for hidden talent, especially in under-resourced communities, could unearth athletes with raw potential. South Africa has a history of producing remarkable underdog performances, and a project like this could expand the pool significantly. But on the other hand, without sustained investment in infrastructure, coaching, sports medicine, recovery programmes, nutrition, and long-term athlete support, Project 300 risks becoming a nationwide talent audition with no runway. We might spot raw diamonds, only to have them fade because the polishing tools aren’t there.

If the plan merely identifies potential athletes but doesn’t build a support structure comparable to those used by leading sporting nations, then we may end up expecting world-class performances “on the cheap”. And that seldom works.

One thing is for sure: the Olympic Dream continues to capture the imagination.

About the author: Dominique Olivier

Dominique Olivier is the founder of human.writer, where she uses her love of storytelling and ideation to help brands solve problems.

She is a weekly columnist in Ghost Mail and collaborates with The Finance Ghost on Ghost Mail Weekender, a Sunday publication designed to help you be more interesting. She now also writes a regular column for Daily Maverick.

Dominique can be reached on LinkedIn here.