Athletes that live at the training facilities have to pay to live and train there and even if they qualify for the games their airfare may not be fully covered, something that not all athletes can afford. This problem is especially bad for sports like Judo that don't have the fanbase of sports like skiing or gymnastics because they rely solely on the government to fund their trip whereas other organizations like USA water polo can help fund the training and travel costs of their athletes attending the games. Furthermore, even for those athletes that do win medals, which is highly unlikely, the bonuses they receive are not enough to live on with the payouts being $25,000 for a gold medal, $15,000 for a silver medal, and $10,000 for a bronze medal. With these payout amounts, very few athletes would be able to rely on them for their income. Taken together, the economic costs of being an Olympic athlete are quite high, with very few athletes making a living from these games, which is why it may not be a wise financial move to try and compete in these games especially if one's sport doesn't have the money that more popular sports do.
Sources
http://time.com/money/4428302/2016-rio-olympics-earning-side-jobs/
I really like the idea of your post. It went beyond the NBA documentary we watched and talked about a new system that does something similar. I think you could've related this to the documentaries we watched because I saw a lot of similarities between them such as the fact that these athlete take odd jobs but in NCAA, the students don't have the time to get odd jobs. Or the fact that there is only a small minority of people who could actually use their sport as a steady job. I also liked how you took a smaller sport that you knew about and went into the detail of what the cost of being player was.
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