Ross Stevens Donates $100M to Pay Every US Olympian and Paralympian $200k
townandcountrymag.com
townandcountrymag.com
Sources: https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/donor-pulls-100-mill... https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4348656-upenn-loses-1... https://www.timesnownews.com/world/who-is-ross-stevens-stone... (many more)
Compare that to the death toll in any comparable war, event, or behavior that we politicize against domestically. Now imagine yourself seeing these things from the outside. That's how the world looks to the 'real' rest of the world, and not the ~15% and declining percent of the world that people call the 'rest of the world', when they mean Europe, the Anglosphere, and a handful of occasional oddballs like Japan or South Korea.
And when you see this world through their eyes, you start to see an entirely different world, and it's the world that we are also starting to see now as all masks and pretexts have been coming off for years now. And in general I think that's a good thing. People can't form realistic and meaningful worldviews if they're stuck in a Marvel Comic Universe perspective of international relations.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Doesn’t much change the horrible situation but overwhelming majority of them were indirect.
Not quite the same as carpet bombing a densely inhabited city.
Also well.. if you look at Sadam’s death toll in the 80s and 90s it isn’t really lower. Rather a low standard of course…
How many do you estimate you caused ?
Of course we haven't actually defined what we mean by significant, so I suppose we will have to drop back to that old standby of 5%.
It's kind of funny to see "anti-interventions" podcasters go full empire mode and justify literally colonization today.
Hardly surprising, since most of these white nationalists love the British Empire's "oeuvre" in non-White countries (but somehow ignore the fact that their own country fought against its tyrannical rule).
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair.
Where salary in that quote could be metaphorical, given there's other reasons like identity, beliefs, or politics.
I also read/watch as much original sources as time and energy allows, that often (not always) gives a very different image than what media represents. For example, what I have read in the documents produces by UN representative for signs of genocide showed very thin/constructed arguments. Haven't read all of it so maybe there are better arguments as well.
A lot of people aren’t okay with it but also choose not to engage on it.
https://theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it...
I’d personally put myself in this camp. I think what Israel is doing is horrible. But the us-versus-them dynamic in the American Palestinian-activist community is exhausting. Furthermore, it is focused on personal showboating—messaging and rallying—versus helping anyone on the ground.
So I’m continuing to focus on Ukraine, my pet war, and northern Ethiopia, my pet FP issue. I’ve been able to materially aid folks there and—twice, on the margin—influence U.S. policy in their respects. I don’t have to deal with partners who want to convince me that each of my friends who doesn’t post daily on Instagram about Tigray is Hitler. Instead, they’re focused on the folks there.
I have opinions on Gaza. But I’m not taking a stand. And let’s be honest, that’s a fair characterization of 90% of folks who constantly go off on rants about Zionists or genocides but have never given a dollar to a humanitarian cause, called an elected or tried to travel to their region in question.
The tendency to tar and feather anyone who doesn’t 100% agree with one as a Zionist. (Which, in these circles, carries the same weight as being a bona fide racist.)
This memorably presented itself a few months ago when folks—potentially on the way to changing their minds—would be called Nazis for referring to the war as a war, as if a genocide within a war is somehow inconceivable.
Absolute morality rallies the base. It doesn’t usually convert moderates. And the situation in Gaza defies absolute morality.
Not commonly.
> I've seen if you don't 100% agree with a Ukraine supporter they call you a Putin bootlicker
I’m sorry. Fuck those guys.
They’re doing damage to the cause in exchange for self aggrandizement. Ersatz therapy through others’ misery is ghoulish.
Perhaps it’s a problem of degrees and segregation. I see much less of that with those fronts. And to the degree it exists, it sequesters itself online and away from the people doing anything useful for the folks on the ground. (My work in Ukraine involved some arms early and then purely political help. In Ethiopia it’s been humanitarian.)
When it comes to Palestine, I see basically zero people quietly focused on the work. (I’ll grant this may be due to ignorance. But it’s exhausting to trawl through shit. And I don’t think I’m alone in disengaging on that basis.)
(2) That doesn’t matter to the situation at hand. The protests on college campuses got WAY out of hand and disrupted the purpose of the institution: teaching.
When opportunities arose to achieve the outcomes they were supposedly fighting for, they were suddenly very quiet.
What not everyone understands is that US aid comes with strings attached. Israel developed multiple fighter jets in the past, for example, but canceled them mainly due to US pressure.
[1] https://jewishinsider.com/2026/01/trump-netanyahu-u-s-milita...
(2) Reading that I wonder if you also supported violent dismissals of Vietnam war protests
Not that carpet bombing a densely populated city wasn’t extremely horrible were there any better was to destroy or at least massively weaken Hamas?
For that matter Hamas could have stopped the Israeli atrocities any time they wanted, they chose not to.
Perhaps not pursuing policies that create the conditions for Hamas to thrive in the first place?
- Israel supported a non-violent predecessor org, which is pretty irrelevant to Hamas.
- Israel allowed Qatari aid to fund some Gaza infrastructure projects, salaries for civil servants, etc.
Neither is actually supporting Hamas, unless we say that allowing food to enter Gaza is also supporting Hamas.
That sounds pretty easy when you're not involved, but things on the ground are rarely that simple. Much of Israeli society is convinced (somewhat accurately) that the Palestinians hate them and want them dead, as much of Palestinian society is convinced of the same (again, somewhat accurately).
I don't know how you get both sides to climb down from this, or does it just end with genocide (of one side or the other). Like, I'm from Ireland and the north of the island was engulfed in violence for the first half of my life (not to a Gaza standard but bad). That only got resolved because a superpower (the US) intervened to help mediate (and help the side that considered themselves Irish).
I would imagine that I might have been very angry at this if I were a member of the other side (the side that considers themselves British), but ultimately it worked out pretty well (modulo Brexit and potential other landmines).
But it's not over, the groups are still really segregated and people just don't talk about it. The Israel Palestine situation is much, much worse and I honestly don't see any superpower being willing or able to mediate this situation.
So yeah, it would be great if everyone could just sing kumbaya, but I don't see how we get there from here.
I think that's probably a pretty uncharitable take. Like certainly it benefits extremists on one side if the other side are also extremists, but certainly he didn't force them to start blowing up buses in Israel.
Did he benefit? Yes. Did he facilitate them? Yes, but mostly to damage the less extreme Palestinian side. Is it all his fault? Definitely not.
To make people believe that Israel is a good thing instead, they could start by delivering lots of food and fresh water. Even more easily, they could start by letting in the food and fresh water that's lined up outside of the border.
But to your point about seeing the other as evil, living with missile shields and walls to guard against the terrors living on the other side, who have made it clear that would love to kill you if they can, has the same psychological effect you mentioned.
What should a country do when a neighbor invades and massacres entire towns, live-streaming the violent deaths and rapes for the world to see? What is the correct response to this?
You have clearly not thought through the game theory and repercussions of what you are suggesting.
Like many college protesters, you would do well to understand the complexity of the mechanics of the real world, and understand that reality ain’t rainbows and butterflies.
I have no clue how you drew the Vietnam war protest thing from what I wrote.
Talk of “genocide” and “indiscriminate leveling of Gaza” indicates to me that you didn’t really understand the situation and probably get your news from propaganda sources - which, unfortunately, include nearly all media sources in this conflict.
Northern Ireland was a gang/rebel group in occupied territory. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and Israel had no boots on the ground on Oct 6th. The situations are not in any way comparable.
Can you provide some evidence for this statement?
EDIT: removed everything except this statement, as I feel it will lead to less productive conversation.
Israel tries to avoid casualties when they can. For example when Hamas launches rockets at Israeli civilian targets, they shoot the rockets down with the Iron Dome and shrug it off. In my view Israel would be perfectly within their rights to return rocket for rocket into Palestinian civilian targets. That the Israeli rockets would have far more devastating effect as they'd produced by a nation state with a proper MIC, not what terrorists or smugglers can jury-rig, and the defenders don't have their own Iron Dome, Palestine would by far get the worst of the exchange, is something Hamas should be thinking of before they go around launching rockets at other people's civilian territory.
That Israel doesn't return rocket for rocket in this way tells me Israel is fighting with a significantly higher amount of restraint and morality than their opponent, and I'm confused as to how many otherwise intelligent people seem to feel otherwise.
I feel sorry for the civilians caught in the middle, but in my view, almost all the moral responsibility for the bad stuff happening to Palestine falls on Hamas. Hamas is always going around deliberately committing atrocities, Israel is often trying to show restraint while still maintaining reasonable military effectiveness against an enemy who likes using human shields.
Provably false: 2018 Great March of return. Peaceful protest against the occupatioon and for the Palestinian right to return.
People got show down by snipers who also (until this day) shot at kids and medics.
Edit: Also the "mowing the lawn" doctrine
From the same page: "1901 the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman central government) gave Jews the same rights as Arabs to buy land in Palestine and the percentage of Jews in the population rose to 7% by 1914"
Gaza would not be starving were this the case, and you should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting otherwise.
What Israel ended up doing in Gaza ended up being extremely horrible.
But what options did they really have? Not doing anything would have been the same(or worse) than the US ignoring 9/11… Hamas on the other hand had the option to stop the war at anytime they wanted, the chose not to.
Yes I think countries shouldn’t kill innocent people, you’d think people that experienced a genocide wouldn’t commit genocide so easily
And there's just no excuse for the part where they shot children with sniper rifles, recorded themselves laughing about it and posted it on TikTok.
Not kick a dog for decades upon decades and act suprised when it bit back?
It's been a shitty situation all round, since the fall of Beersheba if not before, but its a difficult ask to want all to believe October 7th came out of nowhere.
This sounds more like a proximate cause than a “real answer.”
So his goal is to prevent money issues from being a thing getting in the way of athletes achieving. But he has structured it in a way that prevents the money from helping this goal.
> Per the Wall Street Journal, “Half will come 20 years after their first qualifying Olympic appearance or at age 45, whichever comes later. Another $100,000 will be in the form of a guaranteed benefit for their families after they pass away.”
So half of it will never be seen by the athlete. Ever. And the other half will not be seen for at least two decades.
What Olympic athlete is not able to achieve as much because they don't have money decades down the road? Or because their heirs don't have enough money? I might be missing something, but how do these two incredibly-delayed payments help them train now? They can't use money they won't see for 20 or 30 years to hire coaches, buy equipment or pay for track time. They can't buy food or pay rent with money they will never see.
As for the gift to their heirs, that also allows them to consume somewhat more freely, instead of purchasing (as much) life insurance. Most young people don't, but people who compete in dangerous sports probably do.
In the meantime, they need income not advice on frugality.
FWIW, most athletes are already used to being frugal as they juggle an often expensive training schedule with their personal finances. This is being framed as giving them money to focus on their sport/event during their competitive years.
I was responding to the freedom to spend the other poster had in their second paragraph, where I think it's reasonable to look at the insurance that would be better to actually buy.
> So half of it will never be seen by the athlete
This can't be right, right? I never heard of people "receiving a donation" that you get the promise of now, but will be given to your family once you die, sounds a bit macabre. And as you mention, also pointless, how would that make them "break through new frontiers of excellence" when they may not be able to afford rent while being alive?
To me it sounds more than a bit macabre - depending on the familial relations, it would seem like a motive for them to commit suicide in order to provide for their children or for their children to murder them. I can already imagine the memoires being adapted into Netflix shows.
If your sport has any mortality or long term risk (concussions, cardiac events) then this could be seen as a nice extra insurance policy.
Still not worth questioning?
Also, $donator is making, as far as I know, zero demands. These people would be competing if they had to pay. Actually, most of them do have to pay.
Your analogy is comparing apples-to-sqrt(-1)
If you think the above example isn’t a donation then I don’t see the logic behind seeing this as a donation.
And to be clear, I view it as a donation that is still probably net good, but it’s not a selfless donation. The timeline as well also means it can be clawed back at some point in time.
I’d probably rate it a 2/10 for “goodness” where anything greater than 0 is still good.
This doesn't sound macabre at all to me. Sounds more like loophole finding to avoid directly paying the athletes to allow them to keep their amateur status to me.
No, a trust that is setup to give your family money when you die, in order to serve as motivation for you to "break through new frontiers of excellence"
Well, that makes it seem like this isn't a donation then at all, if you need to "achieve a place on the Olympic team"? I thought this was given for people to be able to better reach that, not as a "reward".
This is a "prize" it seems to me, not a "donation".
The title right now is "Ross Stevens Donates $100M to Pay Every US Olympian and Paralympian $200k", while after our conversation, it's pretty clear that this isn't a donation at all, it's a prize/reward for doing something specific. If you don't do that thing, you (and your family once you die) don't get the prize/reward.
Not only is the whole "once you die" part really strange way of trying to "reward" people, it isn't even a "donation" which the article seems to want you to believe.
He can now report a $100M donation, let it grow for 20 years, pay the actual donation, and pocket the remainder tax free.
However -
> The USPOC currently supports ~4500 athletes, or ~$22,222 each.
Machinations of the uber rich and the morality of them aside, they would've gotten nothing and now they're getting something.
You can't claim a donation while still holding onto the money?
It’s not like he needs these funds to buy groceries or pay the mortgage. He’s essentially hoarding assets like all billionaires are.
This is a simplistic example for illustration, the actual financial engineering would certainly create much more complexity in order to obscure things for auditors and the like. But the point is that he/his fiduciary is the one controlling it all.
Yup, the biggest challenge faced by most olympic athletes, and those doing an Olympic campaign, is affording to train, travel, gear, etc, especially in more niche sports, bobsleigh, etc.
I suspect it's worse. It's structured in a way that will probably harm the goal.
The money will go to people who somehow already managed to marshal enough resources to get to the Olympics. Good on you for supporting people after the fact, but by that point money problems have long before winnowed far too many qualified athletes out of the pipeline.
That kid from Moab would be an amazing swimmer. That kid from Punxsutawney shoots one hell of a bow. That kid from Tuscaloosa would have a smoking slapshot. None of them have a hope of clearing the initial monetary barriers.
The most effective time to apply resources is when the athletes are young, not done.
Potentially could also stop others from donating to athletes because they hear this and think "some rich guy already took care of them" not knowing the details.
A friend of mine is an ex-pro tennis player. She's nearing 60 years old now. She's been n 1 in her country and n 2 worldwide in doubles.
And it's not easy for athletes once they age: when they're still young, they make money doing their sport. Then they find other things, often related, to do: for example she trained a world number one for years.
But later on, it gets more difficult: she became a tennis teacher. And the country's sport federation gives her money for quite a few years... But not until 65 years old.
It's precisely later in life that many pro athletes do need money.
Only those at the very, very, very top do make a really good living. For the others, it's hard.
So $100K at 45 is welcome.
P.S: also if you're 100% guaranteed to get $100 K a 45, I'm sure there are way to use that as collateral for borrowing before you're 45. But that may defeat the idea of giving it when they turn 45.
Delaying a normal career to compete in the olympics will set your career and earning potential back by a few years. This money tries to balance it out a bit.
Are you sure? It's not contingent on metals or anything.
https://www.usopc.org/news/2025/march/04/united-states-olymp...
> "The Olympic and Paralympic Games are the ultimate symbol of human excellence. I do not believe that financial insecurity should stop our nation's elite athletes from breaking through to new frontiers of excellence,” said Stevens.
And furthermore:
> By providing financial support for athletes so they can continue competing and by increasing that support for each Games in which they compete, the Stevens Awards will dramatically increase the likelihood that athletes will continue competing, and winning, for America.
Guaranteed benefits can be monetized. The gift’s goal is to start building generational wealth. But nothing prevents me from lending one of these athletes $50k today if they give me an LPOA over that death benefit tomorrow (assuming this doesn’t breach any covenants).
It’s a totally different story if those are in a trust which is invested on behalf of the athletes, which pays out the invested value at time of disbursement. But I would be shocked if it were set up that way. Pleasantly shocked but shocked nonetheless.
This is a great gift to the athletes, don’t get me wrong. There was just no need to oversell it.
On what planet are hundreds of thousands of dollars not generational wealth if played right? You’re talking about sums that are on par with the 401(k)s of retiring union workers.
It’s not riches. But it’s enough to pass along to your heirs. That’s generational wealth.
If your only metric for generational wealth is that the next generation of your family gets it, then sure, tautologically the second amount paid out to your surviving family qualifies. I don’t think most people would consider splitting $20k amongst your heirs to be generational wealth, and I don’t think retiring union workers are a classic generationally-wealthy example that comes to mind for most people.
And again, note that retiring union workers today might hand down a $100k 401(k) to their families. At the time of the athlete’s death ~50 years from now, that number will likely be closer to $500k.
They call J.G. Wentworth?
/Worst earworm since 1-877-KARS-4-KIDS
I wonder if this will adjust for inflation / earn interest at all. If a 20 year old olympian dies 70 years later, then when their family gets $100,000 USD nominal, it will be the equivalent of getting $8,400 in today's money. Assuming the same average inflation from the last 70 years (1956->2026).
Did you inflate over 70 or 50 years?
My read of the original article [1] is it’s a defined benefit. That said, “athletes will receive $200,000 for each Olympics they compete in,” so an athlete who competes for four seasons could stand to get $400,000 when they turn 45 and potentially borrow against their death benefit.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/sports/olympics/team-usa-milan-cortina-e...
Same way all benefits and assets are passed down. One part trustee’s work. Four parts the beneficiaries’.
This seems like some billionaire trying to inflate their donation amount by talking in terms of decades not now. I’m sure there’s conditions attached too (some reasonable but I’m sure some are just intentional land mines)
My reading is Ross made a $100mm donation to the USOPC.
> I’m sure some are just intentional land mines
You’re sure based on zero evidence.
It’s aggressive to call out baseless conclusions being represented as sureties?
The terms are atrocious. imo dude will move money into a his own charity which will hold onto it since no athlete qualify for the next 20 years. After a few years, he will quietly cancel the grant and use it elsewhere.
Granted, that's 20 to 60 years down the line...
Oh this explains it:
> Starting with the Olympic and Paralympic Games Milan-Cortina 2026, and going at least through the 2032 Games, every U.S. Olympian and Paralympian will receive $200,000 in financial benefits for each Games in which they compete:
Here's the setup: you have a billion dollars invested in some account earning some interest, let's say 5% because that's like bond rates (lower than S&P500). Day 1 you generate interest and don't hire. All following weekdays you hire a new employee and day then daily at a yearly rate of Y, say $250k/yr. Most people are going to be surprised that you can basically go an entire year before your account has less than a billion dollars.
I do this because it's so much money the daily interest is not negligible. I mean 1000000000*0.05/365~=$137k. Is back of the envelope and estimating, but it gets the point across. (So you can hire people daily at $100k indefinitely...)
Anyways, googling suggests there's ~600 American Olympians that participated in 2024 and another ~250 paraolympians. So what, we need on the order of $10bn to solve this? I can think of a lot worse ways we currently spend that kind of money and about 15 Americans where this would be less than 10% their total wealth and 11 of those people made more than twice that just last year... I'm not saying anyone should but hey, Elon could solve issues like these without blinking an eye. Probably better PR than anything else he could do
If you invested a billion dollars at a conservative 5% interest rate, you could employ 200 people at 250k a year on the interest alone.
However, 5% real return is not likely from bonds alone.
* "amateaur" meaning independantly wealthy, or supported by patron or state.
It's rare to see a kid from the lowest demographics on the gymnast team unless they've been scouted and picked up by a state or national institute.
Similarly horse racing is about the fastest horse with a certified pedigree.
It's about the bloodline, the trainers, the owners, and not about a Waler that can run four miles into a machine gun nest.
> His entire donation to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC), announced last March, is $100 million—a record breaking gift to the organization.
Just...lol.
"I want to give a ton of money to olympians but... they are too young and dumb to get it now and also they should get half of it after they die."
Unreal paternalism.