"We had a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday where he promised our athletes $50,000, $20,000 and $10,000 respectively for a gold, silver and bronze," Vitaly Smirnov, the president of Russia's national Olympic committee, said.
"In addition, our Olympic committee will pay each individual gold medal-winner in Sydney an extra $50,000 bonus. We're also promised by the government that this money will not be taxed."
"It wasn't easy for our government to find the funds to pay our Olympic medal-winners, taking into account a difficult economic situation in our country," Smirnov said.
"But we were able to convince them of the importance of such bonuses to many of our top athletes, especially if you know how much money other countries are paying their athletes."
Earlier this year, other former Soviet republics - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and the Ukraine - approved incentives for their Olympic medal winners involving similar amounts of money or free housing for their champions.
Reuters
