For athletes, sponsor-funding is a lot like the snow that organizers of the Vancouver Games continue to hope will blanket some of its precipitation-deprived sites in the Canadian Rockies: It can come in welcome blizzards or not at all. It can mysteriously melt away just when it's needed most. And, most significant, without it, most of them can't compete.

Serious medal contenders and high-profile Americans like speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno and skier Lindsey Vonn, whose endorsement deals earn them seven-figure salaries, have few money worries. But most of the 216 athletes on the U.S. team, and those who aspire to one day be among them, need considerable help.

That's because ever since the nearly unprecedented financial panic, which hit just months after the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, the entire Olympic movement - from the International Olympic Committee to biathletes - has been feeling the sting.

The IOC lost a handful of longtime corporate partners, including Johnson & Johnson and Kodak. GM, Kellogg's, Bank of America, and Home Depot, an employer for scores of U.S. athletes, pulled out of their deals with the U.S. Olympic Committee, which counts on sponsors for nearly half its budget. NBC-TV, the Games' biggest bankroller, has predicted it could lose $500 million on the Vancouver Olympics.

Even the smaller companies that tend to back individual athletes have been retrenching.

"When the economy is bad like this," said Shannon Bahrke, the Olympian, "these companies have to cut expenses. We're usually the first things to go."

Though the USOC actually increased funding to its national governing bodies for individual sports by almost 10 percent for the 2010 Games, it sees continued hard times ahead. It drastically trimmed its budget and staff and demanded financial cuts from those sports federations, already stung by the loss of their own sponsors.

"There's no doubt about it," said Bill Marolt, CEO of U.S. Ski and Snowboarding, which has reduced travel, pay, and staff. "This is a challenging economy."

For some athletes, like figure skaters, annual expenses can run into six figures while the amount they can expect from the USOC and national governing bodies can vary from $150 to several thousand dollars a month.

Those figure skaters must pay for several hours of expensive daily ice time, plus coaches, choreographers, costumes, and equipment. Most train away from home, incurring sizable costs for housing, food, and transportation. And then there's the cost of travel to events in Paris, China, and Russia.

"With the economy, it's been very, very difficult for a lot of athletes," said speedskater Allison Baver, who because of deals with Penske Truck rental and Procter & Gamble, is not among them. "We get funding based on performance. But even at this high level, a lot of athletes are having to rely on family support, and that's unfortunate."

Speedskaters, for example, recently moved their training site from the USOC facility in Colorado Springs to Salt Lake City, which has a long-track speedskating surface. While they still receive a monthly stipend from USA Speedskating, they now have to pay for food and housing that was free at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

While European and Asian countries subsidize their Olympians at a level that is four or five times higher, according to American officials, the U.S. relies overwhelmingly on corporate support - no matter where it comes from.

Tongue-in-cheek comedian Stephen Colbert, who hosts a popular show on Comedy Central, The Colbert Report, recently helped USA Speedskating defray the loss of sponsorship money that had been pledged by a Dutch bank. (Speedskating is huge in Holland.) But it wasn't nearly enough.

One male speedskater on the national team, Baver said, gets a stipend of just $150 a month and depends on his parents for the rest. And two-time bronze-medalist Jennifer Rodriquez, 33, said that when she decided to end her retirement last year, she had to sell her possessions until she could find new sponsors.

Fortunately for the Olympics, their unique appeal - according to a 2008 USOC study, they are the most popular sporting event among American women - has prompted other companies to step into the sponsorship void.

Procter & Gamble, which markets primarily to women, has a new multimillion-dollar deal with the USOC to promote 18 of its products. It also has individual relationships with such photogenic Olympians as Baver, Vonn, figure skater Tanith Belbin, and bobsledder Vonetta Flowers.