Drop tax on my medal, shooter says

By Erik Kirschbaum

BEIJING (Reuters) - Italian police officer Francesco D'Aniello won an Olympic silver medal in double trap shooting Tuesday and appealed to the Italian government for a tax exemption on his reward money.

"I would sincerely hope that the (Italian) parliament would pass this law," D'Aniello told a news conference when asked about the taxation back home, a question and answer translated from Italian back and forth through Chinese and English.

"We athletes go through major sacrifices to get to this level. It would be the right thing to do to remove the taxes from what we get here. It would be a very good thing," he said, without stating the value of the reward.

Italy is among the many countries that offer lucrative financial rewards to their Olympic medalists. Greece, for example, offers about 190,000 euros ($277,000) for gold medals, 130,000 for silver and 70,000 for bronze.

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)