By the way, for those of you interested about how much money Olympians make, Elnur will be receiving AZN 100,000 and NOC–AZN 50,000 from the Azerbaijan National Olympic Committee as a reward for his gold medal victory. The amount should be about US$ 123,777 if my calculation is correct.
Photo source: beijing 2008

We have to admit that we don’t know the difference between AZN and NOC-AZN and why the athletes’ incentives are given in the two currencies and not summed up in one total. Anyways, AZN 100,000 is equal to USD 120,700.06 according to this currency converter.

Here’s the announcement, courtesy of Trend News, about the increase in prizes for Azerbaijani athletes :

It is expected that the prizes for Azerbaijani sportsmen, who won medals during the Beijing Olympic Games is to be increased.

“The prizes for sportsmen who gained medals in the Olympic Games is expected to be increased, which depends on the Azerbaijani President’s issue,” Chingiz Huseynzade, Vice President of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Azerbaijan, stated to TrendNews.

The Azerbaijani Government allocates AZN 100,000 and NOC–AZN 50,000 to sportsmen, who won gold medal during the Olympic Games in 2004 in Athens, and the Government allocates AZN 50,000 and NOC AZN 30,000 to sportsmen who won silver medals and AZN 25,000 and AZN 20,000 to bronze medal winners.

So we guess Azerbaijani athletes are getting more support than their counterparts from other countries like, say, Nader al Nasri of Palestine who only receives 100 USD a month.

In case you are wondering, Azerbaijan bagged one gold, one silver, and one bronze medal during the Athens Olympiad. Not bad for a small nation. If its like our country, we’re pretty sure that Azerbaijan is hoping to improve that medal tally in Beijing. So far, 38 Azerbaijani athletes qualified for the Beijing Olympics.

By the way, according to Trend News, the city of Baku in Azerbaijan has made a bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

Do you think it will be successful in its bid? It’s a pretty long shot but we’re talking about Olympic dreams and hopes so who knows what might happen.

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Note: Remember our emerging rivalry with ESPN which we blogged about here? Well, we are giving The Olympian Blog (TOB) another point because we’re pretty sure that ESPN doesn’t know anything about this Azerbaijani incentives for its athletes.

Boo ESPN, you self-described “worldwide leader in sports”, we scooped you again. The score so far: TOB = 2 vs. ESPN = 0