Flavor Flav and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian helped pay Olympian discus thrower Veronica Fraley’s rent after she said she couldn’t afford it.
On Thursday, the Team USA athlete took to X to explain her financial situation and how she was struggling to make rent.
“I compete in the Olympic Games TOMORROW and can’t even pay my rent my school only sent about 75% of my rent while they pay football players (who haven’t won anything ) enough to buy new cars and houses,” Fraley wrote on X with a few thumbs down emojis.
Her post went viral, garnering over 18.9 million views and more than 200,000 likes.
It caught Flav’s attention, who responded to her post by offering to pay for her rent.
“I gotchu,,, DM me and I’ll send payment TODAY so you don’t have to worry bout it TOMORROW,,, and imma be rooting for ya tomorrow LETZ GO,!!!” the rapper wrote in his response.
Minutes later, Ohanian — who is married to tennis great Serena Williams — backed Flav up on his decision.
“C’mon now! I’ll split it with @flavorfav,” Ohanian added.
The tech entrepreneur then followed up with a post of a screenshot of a $7,760 payment he sent Fraley, with the caption “Update! It is done.”
The kind gesture touched Fraley, who thanked both men on X in her response to Ohanian’s post.
“THANK YOU & @FlavorFlav SO MUCH. this makes every difference in the WORLD & I hope to represent team USA well this week,” Fraley wrote.
A representative for Flav confirmed to Business Insider that he had paid Fraley’s rent for a month — which was $1,700 — before Ohanian stepped up and paid her rent for the rest of the year.
Representatives for Ohanian and Frawley did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.
In a follow-up to her original post, Frawley clarified that her remarks weren’t directed specifically at her school.
In a statement posted on its website, Vanderbilt University — where Frawley is enrolled as a student — responded to the athlete’s social media post.
“Vanderbilt is committed to supporting our student-athletes as they pursue their full potential. We provided our student-athlete Veronica Fraley with the maximum financial aid consistent with NCAA regulations. We also help our student-athletes navigate name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities, acknowledging that these are completely separate and independent of the university by NCAA regulations and state law,” the statement read.
Many Olympic athletes are barely scraping by
A 2020 survey of 491 athletes from 48 countries by the athletes’ rights group Global Athletes found that 58% did not consider themselves financially stable.
That’s because most US athletes don’t get paid for competing at the Games unless they win a medal. The US Olympic & Paralympic Committee awards a $37,500 medal bonus for gold, $22,500 for silver, and $15,000 for bronze in every sport.
However, the payouts for US athletes aren’t as lucrative as some other nations.
Singapore offers 1 million Singapore dollars, or about $756,000, for gold medalists at the Olympics — the highest payout globally.
During the Beijing Winter Olympics, Hong Kong offered more than half a million in prize money for athletes who snag the top prize, while Turkey gave out 22-karat gold coins — worth about $383,000 each — to gold medallists.
In April, track and field became the first sport to offer prize money to Olympic champions. World Athletics, the sports international governing body, announced that the athletes who win a gold medal in each of the 48 athletics events in Paris will get $50,000 each.
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