Luckily, Americans like you—and corporations—have been quite generous, and Team USA sponsors currently include United Airlines, Toyota, Visa, Airbnb, Nike and Samsung.

Meanwhile, there are countries that reward athletes substantially more for

Luckily, Americans like you—and corporations—have been quite generous, and Team USA sponsors currently include United Airlines, Toyota, Visa, Airbnb, Nike and Samsung.

Meanwhile, there are countries that reward athletes substantially more for medals, such as Singapore ($740,000 for gold, but they've only had to pay any gold-level bonus once, to Rio 100m butterfly winner Joseph Schooling), the Philippines ($200,000 for gold, but weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, who just won her country's first-ever gold, is reportedly going to get way more in donations, national treasure that she is), Russia (a lifelong government pension for medaling, despite the country itself being technically banned from the Olympics for systemic doping violations) and Estonia (a $5,500 lifetime annual stipend for gold medalists, plus more in retirement—Well done, women's fencing team, their win in team épée the nation's only gold in Tokyo).

And many that offer no cash for medals at all.