The Very Real Struggle That Olympians Face

Rumor has it Michael Phelps is worth about $55 million, but he's in the minority. Most of the other Olympic athletes are seriously struggling financially.

What most people don't know is that many Olympians receive very little funding and don’t make much money from their sport outside of the Olympic Games. Here's an example- javelin thrower Cyrus Hostetler from Oregon, once said the most he’s ever made in a year is $3,000. $3,000. Let that sink in. What's more is that 50% of the Top 10 American track athletes earn less than $15,000 a year from the sport.

Many aspiring Olympians are unemployed and supported by their families and some of those families have even gone bankrupt just so that they could support the dreams of their child.

And so, if you've seen a bunch of GoFundMe pages for Olympic athletes and thought they were a scam, most aren't. Many Olympic athletes have had to turn to websites like GoFundMe to raise money to help keep their dream alive. For instance, javelin thrower, Sam Crouser (also from Oregon), created a GoFundMe page with the hopes of raising enough money so that his family, who he says, "supported me through the thousands of hours of training and competition that it has taken to get me to the place I am today" could see him compete in person at the Olympics.

And then, there's Ashley Nee, an Olympic kayaker from Washington D.C. who created a GoFundMe page and wrote, "Now that I qualified for Rio, the US Olympic Committee has started paying for a lot of my travel, which has taken a huge burden off of my family. However, there are still a lot of expenses that aren’t covered. Mainly, I have to pay for my Olympic boat and back up boat, paddles, gear, food, getting my boat on planes and my training at home. I have calculated these costs to be at least $7000."

In the end, it's worth it for these athletes though. Being able to say you've competed in the Olympics or that you have an Olympic medal isn't something everyone can say they've experienced in life, and that is priceless.

[via GoFundMe/Quartz/The Richest]