National teams get the cold shoulder

By Hannah Clark

updated 9:36 a.m. ET Feb. 26, 2006

NEW YORK - Chad Hedrick doesn't speed skate for the money — but he's not passing the hat for pennies. With a Dutch bank, DSB, as his sponsor, the American speed skater makes over $100,000 a year, more than he ever earned racing on wheels as a world champion in-line skater.

Top speed skaters are gaining attention from corporate sponsors, partly because of high-profile athletes like Hedrick, who signed his endorsement deal before he'd ever competed on ice, and Shani Davis, the first African-American on the Olympic speed-skating team. But their commercial appeal has caused conflicts with the U.S. team, which has traditionally exercised substantial financial control over its athletes.

U.S. Olympic teams — called national governing bodies, or NGBs — pay for travel and training expenses but limit the endorsements that athletes can accept. As the games have become more commercial, prominent athletes can sometimes earn more money on their own. That creates problems for the teams, who then have fewer top Olympians to lure corporate sponsors.

Because of an endorsement dispute, Hedrick and Davis, along with fellow Americans Derek Parra and Chris Witty, have split from U.S. Speedskating. They sign their own sponsors, pay their own expenses and work with their own coaches and trainers.

Of course, not all Olympians have such welcome problems. (See: "Scraping By.") But the speed skaters aren’t the only Olympians pulling in significant endorsement dollars. And they aren’t the only ones having conflicts with their national teams, either. Six snowboarders have set up their own team, the Collection, to avoid the sponsorship rules of their NGB, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. The USSA doesn't allow companies that compete with those sponsoring the team to endorse individual athletes. Members of the Collection, by contrast, vote on their team's endorsers, so the athletes have control.

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"It was a good business opportunity for us," says snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler, who started the Collection along with Ross Powers, Kelly Clark and Andy Finch.

Two other champion boarders, Mason Aguirre and Luke Mitrani, joined later. The team is endorsed by Snickers, Nickelodeon and Yamaha, and the six members can retain their own sponsors as well.

John Collins, an attorney who works with Olympic athletes, says he's been involved with similar disputes in soccer, track, beach volleyball and figure skating. The conflicts take different forms in different sports. Figure skaters, for example, don't sell sponsorship spots on their outfits. But they do sometimes fight for the right to skate in so-called non-sanctioned events, such as Smucker's Stars on Ice, a figure-skating theater show founded by gold medalist Scott Hamilton.

Slide show   Taking gold Check out the best images from the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Endorsements didn't cause this much conflict 30 years ago, because even the best Olympic athletes couldn't attract as much sponsorship money as they do today. This changed during the tenure of Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee from 1980 to 2001. During that time, the rules were changed to allow professional athletes — like American basketball stars — to compete in the games.

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