Australia's Olympic medallists took home more than $650k in medal incentives, Paralympians getting zero is not good enough

And rightfully so, with 17 gold, seven silver and 22 bronze medals making up the 46 in total.

Under the Australian Olympic Committee's Medal Incentive Funding, which aims to incentivise athletes for their efforts on the world stage and to continue training for 2024, Australian athletes (both winter and summer) receive $20,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze if they continue on their professional path.

This takes the total expenditure to $665,000 for Tokyo, but as there were several multi-medal winners in the pool, this figure decreases, as only their best result counts and multi-funding does not exist.

However, Paralympians are not included in the funding, as they operate independently of the AOC and receive no monetary incentive to continue training into the next cycle for their achievements.

A Paralympics Australia spokesperson confirmed they did not receive any funding for medals.

Despite this, there are several athletes competing at their third, fourth and in Newcastle's Christie Dawes' case, seventh, Paralympics.

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This is not the only key disparity Australian Paralympic athletes encounter versus their Olympic counterparts. Funding to get them to Tokyo depends on funding from Sporting Australia, fundraising, sponsorship and federal, state and territory governments.

Whereas AOC funding is a mix of income from the Australian Olympic Foundation, grants from the IOC, grants from the organising committees, sponsorship, licencing, fundraising, state/territory Olympic councils and appeal committees.

One of the biggest downfalls is sponsorship. In 2020 the AOC received more than $17.5 million in sponsorship deals and in the financial year 2019/20 the Paralympics received more than $3.5 million.

So why are we not investing in our para-athletes? They train just as hard, they play just as hard and punch above our country's weight in medals. The argument lands on the same one women's sports has been chipping away at for years.

Prior to the postponement of Tokyo 2020, to send the 179-athlete strong Paralympic team it was going to cost more than $10 million.

The federal government gave $8 million towards that in 2019, but it fell short.

Paralympic Australia said in February 2019 it would aim to raise the outstanding $2.5 million for the team through fundraising efforts, corporate sponsors and state government support over the coming months before Tokyo.

Before in May 2021, the federal government once again came to the rescue, pledging $3.5 million in the Federal Budget to help send a team after the financial impacts of COVID-19.

Despite the boost, Paralympic Australia is still fundraising to get people to buy a virtual $25 seat to show support for athletes and in turn fund the next generation of athletes.

So far more than 4500 seats have been purchased and more than $120,000 raised, to invest in community sports programs, changing community perceptions and breaking barriers.

One barrier I would like to see broken is the incentive funding. Para-athletes train just as hard as their Olympic counterparts, if not harder, to reach the podium and options should be explored to fund this.

Paralympics Australia is seemingly doing all it can, so where does the funding come from? Sponsorships it seems.