The London Paralympics, which took place in 2012, turned out to be more successful for Russia than the main Olympic Games. Our team took the second place in the overall team ranking in terms of the number of awards. The country's leadership could not fail to note their achievements.
On September 11, 2012, the ceremony of presenting state awards to the Paralympic winners was held in the Kremlin Palace. 5 athletes were awarded the Order of Honor, 37 athletes received the Order of Friendship, and another 36 medalists were awarded medals of the Order of Merit for the Patronymic.
Also, Vladimir Putin announced the amount of payments that will be received by successful Paralympic athletes as a prize for their awards. The encouragement for the gold medal will be 4 million rubles, for the silver one - 2.5 million rubles and 1.75 million rubles for the bronze. Thus, the Paralympic awards have become equal in size to the Olympic ones. True, the Olympic medalists were also presented with Audi cars, and they are not going to donate vehicles to the Paralympians.
The President recommended that all regional leaders of the country contribute to the development of Paralympic sports and work to create a comfortable environment for them to work, live and create. However, these are only general recommendations and there is no guarantee that officials will somehow react to these words. Nevertheless, some regions decided to additionally celebrate their Paralympic medalists. For example, athletes representing St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region won certificates worth 3 million rubles. And athlete Fyodor Tricolich, who has won 4 awards, who turned to Governor Alexander Drozdenko about living space, will receive an apartment. The same was done in the Omsk region, where gold medalists will receive 3 million rubles each, and silver ones - 1.75 million rubles each.
It should be noted that all these incentive measures were taken only in relation to athletes who won any Paralympic awards. They did not touch the rest of the athletes in the amount of more than 200 people, and they only have a standard set of benefits provided by the state to all citizens with disabilities.
