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Level Field Fund Establishes Level Field Fund – SwimmingMichael Phelps Foundation Donates $100,000 to the Level Field Fund to Help Swimmers in Need of Financial Assistance; Applications Received by September 15 to be Evaluated for Funding This Year
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Golf Channel: Els gives another major assist
Ernie Els’ garden is flowering. Louis Oosthuizen’s British Open victory Sunday marks back-to-back weeks that graduates of Els’ South African junior golf foundation have credited Els with helping them realize dreams they wouldn’t be pursuing without his help. Kelli Shean, a 22-year-old amateur from Cape Town, made a surprising run to the top of the leaderboard during the first round of the U.S. Women’s Open at Oakmont the week before last. She’s a product of Els’ Fancourt Foundation and his vision for promising young golfers. So is Oosthuizen. . . According to the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation (http://www.ernieels.com/foundation/index.html), the organization’s mission is: “To identify talented young South Africans predominantly from families of limited resources and provide them with educational and life-skill assistance and playing opportunities in order to produce successful, well-rounded and educated young golfers."
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USA Today: Fund gives hopefuls an opportunity
In the world of snowboarding, Ross Powers is known as much for his generosity as he is for his Olympic success. In the last nine years, the 2002 Olympic halfpipe champion has helped financially strapped snowboarders, including two of the athletes who beat him out for spots on the 2010 U.S. Olympic team, through grants from the Ross Powers Foundation. Now, as potential Olympians in all sports struggle to find adequate funding in a down economy, Powers is bringing even more star power to the cause. With the help of other Olympians, including Michael Phelps, and his first big sponsorship, Powers is launching the Level Field Fund to expand his reach into other Olympic and action sports. "I've been to the Olympics and luckily had great performances there," says Powers, who also won halfpipe bronze in 1998. "It feels just as good to help athletes out and for them to make it as it does to make it myself." In addition to Phelps, swimmer Lenny Krayzelburg, skier Daron Rahlves and snowboarder Seth Wescott have signed on to support the fund. OrthoLite will donate $1 to the fund for every insole it sells in retail outlets.
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World-Class Athletes Join Forces to Support the Level Field Fund
Michael Phelps, Daron Rahlves, Seth Wescott and Lenny Krayzelburg among those supporting athlete funding initiative.
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OrthoLite Insoles Now Available For Purchase
Insoles found in 100 million shoes a year are now available for consumer purchase. $1 of every pair purchased is donated to the Level Field Fund to help fund talented athletes with financial need.
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The New York Times: Ski Team Pinched Everywhere but Top
The United States Ski and Snowboard Association continues to revel in its record-breaking success at the Vancouver Olympics . . . (but) discontent is simmering among skiers who say budget cuts have sliced too deeply into athlete financing, forcing elite competitors to pay for everything from airline tickets to training camps even as the organization’s top executives are among the highest paid in the Olympic world. . . Athletes considered most likely to qualify for the Vancouver Olympics were shielded from the budget cuts, but several of the team’s most promising up-and-comers felt the impact . . . asking a greater number than usual to pay thousands toward their own training costs, several skiers said.
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ESPN: Athletes Struggle Part of the Dream
Like (pairs figure skater Mark) Ladwig, most athletes reach the Olympics through equal parts determination, work and financial sacrifice. . . Putting aside careers to pursue their Olympic dreams; they've lost jobs, scrambled for funding, maxed out credit cards, drained bank accounts, worried about health care and wondered how they would make their mortgage payment . . . often the real Olympic skill is just paying the bills. . . There are two things to bear in mind as you watch the Winter Olympics and dream about your child one day receiving a medal on the podium. Most winter sports don't pay very well, if at all. And they also are very expensive.
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Philadelphia Inquirer: Most U.S. Olympians Struggle to Find Funding
U.S. team (members) 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. . . 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. . . But most of the 216 athletes on the U.S. team, and those who aspire to one day be among them, need considerable help.
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The New York Times: Speedskating’s Olympic Rewards Fail to Pay the Bills
(Speedskater) Jilleanne Rookard, had an abundance of talent, desire and grit. . . but a cash deficit threatened to derail her bid to make the 2010 United States Olympic team. Rookard was at a crossroads . . . Without financial assistance, she would have to quit training, possibly before the team for the Vancouver Games was chosen in December. . . Rookard’s father died of a heart attack when she was 18, and her mother, Claire, was found to have multiple myeloma in 2005. With six siblings, Rookard could count on a wealth of emotional support but little financial assistance. In the lead-up to the three-month Olympic team selection process in the fall, Rookard was living in the furnished basement of a speedskating family near the Pettit Center. Her monthly rent was $300. She was training 8 to 10 hours a day, a schedule that restricted her employment options. Rookard, who was not receiving a stipend from the U.S.O.C. or U.S. Speedskating, worked 20 hours a week as a D.J. at a roller rink and subsisted on leftover pizza from birthday parties. . . She persevered because she viewed representing her country and her community in the Olympics as a calling worthy of taking a vow of poverty.
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Swimnetwork: Dark Days for the Pro Swimmer
The sun has officially set on the bounty of Beijing. Unless your name is Phelps, these appear to be difficult days indeed for swimmers seeking to make a living doing what they love in the water. According to one man with authoritative knowledge of the matter, the situation is dire. "No one wants to address the fact that, post London, we're going into a time with a substantially reduced American medal count. And that's because the (economic) model for our elite athletes is broken," says agent Evan Morgenstein. . . All of which is rather grim, particularly if you're an NCAA champion, just beginning to tap your talent, knowing - to your very core - that it could be you on top of that podium, hearing the anthem played just for you in London two and a half years from now. If only you can make ends meet.
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USA Today: Hearts of gold: Olympians find ways to give to others
(Highlights the philanthropic efforts of several Olympic athletes, including the Ross Powers Foundation) – The foundation initially helped only snowboarders but now has supported athletes in more than 10 sports, including skeleton and taekwondo. . . Powers is trying to make his third Olympic team in another event, snowboardcross. After finishing third in a World Cup last week in Telluride, Colo., he drove to another Colorado resort to watch Danny Davis, a former grant recipient, win a Dew Tour halfpipe competition. "To know that I helped him out in a little way so he could follow his dreams and become what he has," Powers says, "it's awesome."
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The Oregonian: Sponsorships Declining, Winter Olympic Athletes Get Creative to Find Backing
When the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association said it had no money for him, snowboarder Chris Klug and his aspiring-Olympian training partners turned to a surprising source: Hooters. The company and a few others agreed to sponsor Klug, a 2002 Olympic bonze medalist, and three teammates as they formed an independent professional snowboard team to train for the 2010 Games in Vancouver. Unlike other nations, the U.S. government doesn't fund training for Olympic athletes. Those who don't reach world-class marks or who compete in lower-profile sports often find themselves on their own, especially as costs increase and governing bodies support a growing program of Olympic sports. The recent upheaval in the U.S. Olympic Committee -- after Chicago's defeated bid for the 2016 Games, its acting CEO said she would step down -- exacerbates financial issues. "To be internationally competitive, it pretty much is a full-time job," said Chris Vadala, team leader, USOC Sport Performance Division. "We recognize that we're not going to be able to cover all the expenses that athletes have."
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Seattle Times: Instead of Asking for Money, USOC Officers Should Take a Pay Cut
Keep a grip on your wallet, Olympics fans. Hoping to tug at your patriotic heartstrings, the U.S. Olympic Committee is about to launch a big fundraiser: "America Supports Team USA." Nothing wrong with that. It costs money to field strong Olympic teams, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, which raises almost all its money through fundraising, broadcast revenues and sponsorships, always seems to be in need of more. Especially now, when many athletes are struggling to make ends meet because of the recession and dried-up sponsorships. But a look at the annual tax reports filed by the USOC as a nonprofit might make Americans think twice before opening their checkbooks.
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Orange County Register: Where’s the Love for Swimmer Jason Lezak
Sports business analysts estimate that 99 percent of Olympic-related endorsements go to less than 2 percent of athletes. (Olympic swimmer Jason) Lezak's situation and similar ones for other Beijing gold medalists also shows how dependent American athletes in Olympic sports like swimming have become on corporate funding to underwrite their training costs for the Games and how vulnerable those athletes now are given the current economic climate. In recent months Lezak and Peirsol and scores of teammates have been reminded that, when it comes to the Olympians, Madison Avenue and the American public have a short attention span. . . Lezak said he is not looking to get rich - he just wants to make enough to remain in the sport. . . But Lezak, Peirsol and others are concerned that with corporate sponsorship shrinking, other Olympians will not be able to stay in the sport or will not be able to train at the level required to maintain the international success the American public has grown to expect.
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Newsweek: America’s Unemployed Olympic Hero
(Olympic swimmer) Jason Lezak does not have a single sponsorship. Not one. His only corporate backer, Nike, got out of the swimming business before the Beijing Games, no longer willing to compete with Speedo. There went a six-figure annual paycheck that funded most of Lezak's career and his $1,000-a-month condo mortgage. He figured another company would swoop in, but he's still waiting. "It stresses me out," he says. "But I have to keep my hopes up." Backstroker Aaron Peirsol, another Nike swimmer, is also trying to race without a sponsor. Breast-stroker Brendan Hansen is taking a year off. "The worst-case scenario is here," says Evan Morgenstein, Lezak's agent. "Athletes are starting to say they can't do it." Even in boom times, most athletes struggle between Olympic games; post-Beijing, sponsorships have evaporated along with everything else in the economy.
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USA Today: Economy clashes with dreams of 2010 Olympic hopefuls
With costs rising and sponsorships dwindling, the federations that train the USA's Winter Olympians are casting about for creative ways to raise money and paring spending any way they can. The economic downturn has hit at a time they can ill afford it, with the 2010 Olympics fast approaching. The Vancouver Games will be held a year from now. . . The federations are as varied as the sports they represent, from tiny US Biathlon, which oversees a handful of athletes, to relatively mammoth U.S. Ski and Snowboard, the national governing body for everything from alpine skiing to snowboard to nordic combined. The weak economy has affected them all. . . Overall the federations are trying to hold the line on funding for athletes likely headed to Vancouver, instead cutting back on development programs. . . Such an approach has them fearful they're mortgaging the USA's Winter Olympic future to pay the bills for 2010. "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 (for the 2014 Winter Olympics) as medal hopefuls," U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton CEO Darrin Steele says.
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USA Today: Olympic quest has a price tag for all athletes
Steven Holcomb is the USA's top men's bobsled driver. He won a silver medal in the four-man event last week in a World Cup event at the 2010 Olympic track in Whistler, British Columbia. He'd like to do the same a year from now in the Olympics, and perhaps upgrade to gold. But his prime motivation might not be what you think. "The pressure is not to win a medal for the country," he says. "It's pressure to win a medal so I can pay the bills." Holcomb has maxed out his credit cards trying to make sure he has the right equipment and his crew can get to competitions. "We don't get paid to do this, so we rely on the sponsor money and the products they provide us. When they pull back, we suffer as well." (Noelle Pikus-Pace, USA skelton athlete adds) “As an Olympic athlete, many people think that we are fully funded and living the high life of fame and fortune. However, it is a constant struggle to stay ahead financially. Out of pocket, personal expenses for equipment alone is somewhere around $20,000. Since I have to train all year long and compete for six months of the year, it is very difficult to find a job that allows the required amount of flexibility.”
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