Olympic athletes win new Hyundais

Athletes who won medals at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games are getting free Hyundais… but it’s not South Korean athletes picking up the keys.

Instead, it’s gold, silver and bronze medalists from Romania, with billionaire Ion Țiriac fulfilling his promise to give cars to winning athletes.

Romanian outlet Golazo reports 16 medalists have received cars from the billionaire, who went above and beyond his original promise of only awarding vehicles to gold medalists.

Those who received gold get a new Hyundai Ioniq 5, while silver medalists get a Kona and bronze medalists get a Bayon, a European-market Hyundai SUV which sits below the Kona.

Not only that, but athletes who received two medals won two cars, while Sabrina Voinea – who narrowly missed out on a podium finish – has also been gifted a car.

All up, Mr Țiriac has gifted 22 vehicles, totalling almost one million euros (~A$1.65 million).

Each model receives custom graphics that include the sport in which the athletes received their medals.

He also gave the athletes life insurance policies from one of his companies, as well as unique medals.

The billionaire businessman is a former athlete himself who participated in the 1964 Winter Olympics, and has a car museum called the Țiriac Collection.

This exhibition now also features a Hyundai Ioniq 5 signed by all the Romanian medalists from the 2024 Olympics.

It isn’t just Romanian athletes that have won cars for their performance at the Olympics, with Malaysian medalists were given cars from the local division of Chinese carmaker Chery.

MORE: Olympic medalists receive a Chery on top