Most U.S. Olympians struggle to find funding

Freestyle skier Michelle Roark sells perfumes she creates. Teammate Shannon Bahrke produces her own boutique coffee. Cross-country skier Torin Koos is sponsored by USA Pears. American bobsledders get money from a Canadian manufacturer of therapeutic tape.

Other members of the U.S. team that will march into Vancouver's BC Place when the Winter Games open there Friday have had to cut grass, bus tables, or rely on Mom and Dad for the financial support it takes to win an Olympic medal.

Their creativity and desperation are symptomatic of the impact the economic downturn has had on the Olympic movement as companies large and small withdraw financial support.

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.

"We wanted a relationship with some upper-tier athletes because the Olympics appeal so broadly to consumers . . . particularly to women," said Kirk Perry, a P&G marketing vice president.

Curiously, in part because of how some corporate sponsors were burned in the Tiger Woods scandal, Perry said his firm subjected these apparently squeaky-clean Olympians to a "really thorough vetting process".

"Every stone was turned over," Perry said.

Some athletes, like Bahrke and Michelle Roark, the skier, have started their own businesses as a way to fund their dream-chasing.

Bahrke, whose coffee company was based in her Utah garage until neighbors summoned the fire department one too many times, said this was the first year in more than a decade when she had to reach into her own pockets.

"I either had to do that or retire," said Bahrke, who said she spent $20,000 of her own in 2009.

Though her Silver Bean Coffee brand is still distinctly in brewing's minor leagues, it has sold enough to pay for her training camps, physical therapy, and some travel, she said.

Roark has a degree in chemical engineering, and when she got a whiff of the changed financial climate, she put it to use, creating various all-natural perfumes - Phi-Nomenal - that she now sells in a downtown Denver store.

"What I was looking for was a way to support the lifestyle I love and my athletic goals," said Roark, who, at one point, was forced to work three jobs and live in a tent.

Some Olympians, weary of waiting for help from their federations, have reached out on their own to make lucrative marketing connections.

Baver, who lives in the Reading suburb of Sinking Spring, wrote a letter to Penske Truck rentals, which is not only based in her native Berks County but also employs her sister.

The marketing director there happened to be the son of a competitive speedskater and quickly signed her on as a spokeswoman.

In return for public appearances, the rights to her image, and a prominent spot on the Web site they designed for her, Penske now supports Baver in a variety of ways, including upgrading her to first-class on flights around the world.

"Usually, U.S. Speedskating would fly us coach," Baver said. "There would be four-hour layovers and all sorts of strange connections. We'd get off a plane in Korea or China and have to go skate. Now when I get there I feel way better than a lot of my competitors. I had extra leg room after I broke my leg. Things like that can make a difference."

Because of budget cuts, deals that don't expire until after the 2010 Games, and a careful redistribution of its athlete funding, the U.S. team likely won't feel a big effect from the economy. It's the future that worries American sports officials.

"The concern is not that we're eliminating the athletes that are going to Vancouver as medal hopefuls but that we're eliminating the athletes that are going to Sochi [Russia, for the 2014 Winter Olympics] as medal hopefuls," Darrin Steele, the CEO of U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton, told USA Today.

An indication of the seriousness of declining sponsorship revenue came late last month, when the normally circumspect USOC lashed out at what it calls "ambush marketers," companies that cite the Olympics or Olympians in ads without having paid for that right.

Not long after Subway began airing commercials in which Olympian Michael Phelps is seen swimming his way to Vancouver, the USOC and IOC issued an unusually blunt statement that mentioned no specific company.

"Companies which try to create the false impression that they are an official partner of the Olympic Games, or create a false association with the Olympic Games, are cheating Olympic athletes," said Gerhard Heiberg, an IOC executive board member.

"It is important that the public is made aware of these organizations and how they are depriving the Olympic Games and sport development around the world of essential support."

Subway, meanwhile, returned the fire.

"Subway has a successful history of partnering with elite athletes," Tony Pace, chief marketing officer, said in a statement of the company's own. "Regarding our latest commercial featuring Michael Phelps, Subway does not share the USOC's perspective and the conclusions being drawn from it."