World Athletics’ radical decision to become the first sport to award prize money to Olympic gold medallists came as a bolt from the blue – but it also carried the subtlety of a bare-chested strongman swinging a fairground sledgehammer.
This was a move designed to poke at the International Olympic Committee’s tenderest regions, by highlighting the fact in the 128-year history of the Games it has never paid its stars to compete in the biggest sporting show of all. Judging by the IOC’s terse response, it worked too.
