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."
