Olympic athletes finding lucrative sponsorship deals harder to come by

Australia’s Olympic athletes are facing the sobering reality that the huge sponsorship dollars that filled their predecessors’ pockets are vanishing.

Glamour swimmers such as Grant Hackett and Ian Thorpe comfortably earnt four or five times a year what many of the current swim stars make.

The gap is not just down to the fact that they were proven Olympic standouts, while today’s crop will be very much on trial at the Rio Olympics.

While Thorpe and Hackett earnt more than $2 million a year from sponsorships, life for the current generation is much more challenging in a tougher financial climate.

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