As the PTO gears up for this Friday’s highly anticipated Grand Final – an event in which Dutch star Menno Koolhaas will be racing – remarkable news has surfaced. In a wide-ranging interview with a famous national newspaper in The Netherlands, Koolhaas revealed that he is still owed around fifty thousand euros in prize money by the PTO.
Koolhaas describes a troubling situation: despite months of waiting, a significant portion of his earned prize money remains unpaid.
“That amount is still outstanding. I’ve been waiting for months. They’re not very good at paying,” he said in the interview. It’s not the first time he has spoken openly about how difficult it can be to make ends meet as a professional athlete.
And that makes the story all the more painful. Koolhaas has been delivering world-class performances for years. Most recently he claimed victory at Ironman Arizona – one of the fastest finishes globally and a new, emphatic Dutch record. After the race, he told Triathlon Today he still hasn’t reached his full potential.
But the issue of unpaid PTO funds doesn’t stop with Koolhaas. Several professional athletes have reported similar experiences, painting a broader – and increasingly concerning – picture about the PTO’s payment practices.
we’ve asked the PTO for an official statement but we didn’t receive one at the moment of writing. We will add once received.
