BEIJING (Reuters) - Italian police officer Francesco D'Aniello won an Olympic silver medal in double trap shooting on Tuesday and appealed to the Italian government for a tax exemption on his reward money.
"I would sincerely hope that the (Italian) parliament would pass this law," D'Aniello told a news conference when asked about the taxation back home, a question and answer translated from Italian back and forth through Chinese and English.
"We athletes go through major sacrifices to get to this level. It would be the right thing to do to remove the taxes from what we get here. It would be a very good thing," he said, without stating the value of the reward.
Italy is among the many countries that offer lucrative financial rewards to their Olympic medallists. Greece, for example, offers about 190,000 euros ($277,000) for gold medals, 130,000 for silver and 70,000 for bronze.
This is everything that is wrong in the Olympics; the games should not be about financial reward but about the taking part, producing the best you can do, and being proud of what you have achieved. If you win then a medal then that should be reward enough. What do we give our athletes for winning medals anybody know?
