Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has created a $3 million fund to reward athletes who win gold medals or set world records in four Olympic and Paralympic sports.
Under her private incentive fund covering swimming, artistic swimming, rowing and volleyball, the mining billionaire will give $20,000 to gold medallists at a world championship, Olympics or Paralympics.
World records will be rewarded with $30,000, with $1.5m to be allocated annually this year and 2024 – the year of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics.
Rinehart’s incentive funding has been backdated to cover last month’s world aquatic championships in Fukuoka, where Australia’s able-bodied swimmers won 13 gold medals and set five world records.
Australia’s para swimmers also won 12 golds at their world championships in England earlier this month.
“This additional funding … is fantastic,” Australian Swimmers Association president Bronte Campbell said on Sunday.
“She is truly unique as a patron of our swimmers.”
Rowing Australia president Rob Scott said the generosity to the sport of Rinehart and her company Hancock Prospecting had no peer.
“There is no other patron who has been so generous with both their personal support and advocacy for our athletes,” he said.
The financial support was additional to Rinehart’s $60m-plus investment in swimming, artistic swimming, volleyball and rowing in the past decade.
Last March, Rinehart withdrew a $15m sponsorship of Netball Australia after Indigenous netballer Donnell Wallam asked for her uniform not to carry the Hancock Prospecting logo.