THE Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA), like all sporting bodies in Jamaica, is continuously grappling with finding ways to raise money needed to execute programmes or to finance participation in competitions.

Ideas have been put forward for the association to earn much-needed cash. Some have remained on the table, while others have been thrown out.

One that the JAAA is not considering is any move to extract revenue from professional athletes’ earnings at events such as the IAAF World Championships.

“Some countries do tax the athletes, for want of a better word, and some countries hold onto their entire earnings and then give them support. Some countries hold onto 10 per cent of their [athletes’] earnings as a right. We have never taken this route and we have no plans to do it,” said JAAA President Dr Warren Blake during the Jamaica Observer Press Club last Friday.

At the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, athletes through to the final of individual events were given lucrative cash rewards. Gold medallists earned US $60,000, while silver and bronze medal winners won US$30,000 and US$20,000, respectively.

An individual finishing eighth in an event took home US$4,000.

In the relays, the gold medal-winning team copped US$80,000, while silver and bronze medal winners received US$40,000 and US$20,000, respectively. Finishing eighth earned that team US$4,000.

In addition, world record-breaking achievements attracted a special bonus worth US $100,000.

Each year, the JAAA, founded in the early 1900s and later re-formed in 1932, sends numerous youth and senior teams to participate in overseas competitions.

Jamaica’s track and field team to major senior events can usually number up to 50 competitors.

Ludlow Watt, the treasurer of the local track and field body, told journalists at the Press Club that the cost to the JAAA for sending one athlete to the World Championships amounts to approximately US$7,000.

He said much of that expense is significantly off-set by subsidy provided by the IAAF or by the International Olympic Committee, in the case of the Olympic Games.

In 2013, the IOC announced that athletics will get a lower share of Olympic revenues after a recalculation of the federations’ revenues.

For the London 2012 Olympics, athletics, the flagship sport of the Games, was to receive approximately US $47 million.

The new plan for the Rio de Janeiro 2016 revenue distribution will see the money shared among athletics federations reduced due to a restructuring of the sports categories.

— Sanjay Myers