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Indonesia provides over 380,000 USD reward for Olympic gold medalist

Xinhua, August 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Indonesian government provides a reward of 5 billion rupiah (about 380,500 U.S. dollars) for each of mixed doubles players who recently grabbed gold medal in the Olympic badminton tournament after trashing their Malaysian rivals.

The sum of reward for Tontowi Ahmad and Lilyana Natsir was reported the second largest in the world after that of provided by Singapore government for swimmer Joseph Schooling who presented the first Olympic gold medal for the nation. Schooling would receive almost 730,000 U.S. dollars for winning the 100 meters butterfly in Rio.

Tontowi/Lilyana, bronze medalists in the 2008 Olympics, defeated Chan Peng Soon/Goh Liu Ying in two straight sets in the final at Rio's Riocentro Pavillion 4 as Indonesia happened to be celebrating national Independence Day on Wednesday.

A senior official at Indonesia's Sports and Youth Ministry said that the prize money would be transferred to their bank accounts sometimes in September.

"We would coordinate with Olympics athlete trainer task force (Satlak Prima) soon after the athletes arrive in Indonesia. We would assure the data and identities of those eligible to receive the bonus so as to make us accountable should an auditing is conducted (after the process)," Gatot Dewo Broto, a sports and youth minister's deputy overseeing improvement of national sports achievement, said here on Thursday.

The Indonesian government previously promised to provide 2 billion rupiah (about 152,200 U.S. dollars) and 1 billion rupiah (about 76,100 U.S. dollars) for Olympic silver and bronze medalist respectively.

The transfer of bonus money for Olympic medalists will be conducted simultaneously with those vying in the Paralympics scheduled for Sept. 7-18, Gatot said.

Indonesia sends eight athletes to compete in weightlifting, athletic, swimming and table tennis at the Paralympics.

Indonesia has collected one gold and two silver medals as of Thursday, making the nation ranked 39 in Rio Olympics medal tally. Endit