Olympic athlete Lolo Jones is going to be late on her rent this month. At least that's what the two-time Olympic hurdler turned bobsledder cheekily said in a Vine video she uploaded to Twitter. Jones posted a video to her account talking about how she barely made any money during the seven-month bobsled season.
"Seven months with bobsled season. The whole season. That's it...I'm going to be a little late on my rent this month," she said in the video as she showed the camera her check from the U.S. Bobsled & Skelton Federation totaling $741.84. That equates to a little over $100 a month.
Jones said she decided to share her check because she wanted to shed light on how much athletes really make. Not everyone in the sports industry makes millions of dollars. As one of the most well-known female athletes and quite a few endorsements Jones doesn't actually have to worry about paying her rent on time but she said that was not the point.
"The bottom line is that all Olympic athletes dedicate their lives to their sports and do not all receive lucrative paychecks like mainstream professional sports," Jones told E! Online. "So hopefully this will make people appreciate just how hard Olympians work, often just for the love of the sport."
Her Vine did not sit well with some people who felt like the accomplished athlete had nothing to complain about. Olympic gold medalist Steven Holcomb told USA Today that the video did not sit well with him.
"It wasn't taken very well. People were really kind of insulted. You just made $741, more than most athletes in the sport. So what are you complaining about?" he said. "The way it came across to a lot of the athletes here was kind of snobby because she's one of the most well-known athletes in the world and she's making pretty good money in endorsements. And to basically turn around and slap us in the face because you didn't make any money this year in bobsledding while taking money from other's athletes? She slapped pretty much every athlete in the U.S. federation in the face. That was the general consensus."
Jones insisted that her intention was not to make anybody mad but to just help shed a light on the situation and possibly encourage things to begin to change in bobsledding.
"I don't want to make anyone mad, and I've always wanted to help out the bobsled athletes," she told E! Online. "Some of them have debt because they've given their life to the sport. My partner Jazmine [Fenlator] and I had to raise money for the bobsled to be funded just to finish the season, because only two of the three sleds are funded by the team."
Jones did get a lot of support on Twitter from other bobsledders who felt it was good that she was trying to shine a light on this issue.
Brock Kreitzburg, a 2006 Olympian, tweeted: "Welcome to the world of bobsledding. Try 7 years of it. I think I left poorer than when I first began. #fortheloveofsport?"
U.S. bobsledder Elana Meyers tweeted her thanks to Jones for bringing "the issue to light. Bobsledders aren't high paid athletes like you see on TV."
