Olympians and elite athletes are born with a special drive that propels them to greatness. However, drive must be coupled with opportunity to make a childhood dream a reality. Often times, the reality of financial challenges – heating bills, car payments, rent – prohibit those dreams from taking shape.
Today's female greats are going to extraordinary lengths to push their bodies to the limit as they represent their sport and their country, yet they continue to struggle to make ends meet. Living the life of an elite athlete is like living two lives at once; it's every ounce of sweat for every inch of glory – and every penny in the bank.
Tania Satchwell, a professional motorcross rider, must balance an unfathomably demanding training schedule with a rigorous workday. “A lot of the guys are paid to train and ride,” she noted. “For female [motorcross riders]...there are maybe three or four getting a small salary to compete.”
Satchwell added, “You have to be disciplined to get up with the sun and go to the gym. [At the] same time, you have to be disciplined and not go out to dinner. [I've been] living off peanut butter and honey for the past weeks...so I can afford to eat good the day before the race. It's tough.” Satchwell even sacrifices for the gas to fill her bike.
Generally speaking, in the workplace, for every dollar a man is paid, females earn only 77 cents. (2007 Census Bureau) When the gender barrier is transferred into the sports world, in one year, Tiger Woods earned more than $87 million while the world's highest paid female athlete, Maria Sharapova, made just over $18 million. (Source: Forbes.com, The World's Best Paid Athletes, 2006)
So, while equal prize money remains a hot-button issue, most female athletes can't afford to sit back and wait – or train feverishly without sufficient monetary recognition. After an exhausting workout on the slopes, Olympic mogul skier Jillian Vogtli does not retire to the outdoor Jacuzzi for the rest of the morning; she has a paycheck to earn.
Yes, just before the lights are turned off and the hot water turns cold, the Home Depot tells the weary athlete, “You could do it, we could help.” And the knight in the orange-apron comes rolling in – by the truckload.
The Home Depot is the largest employer in the U.S. Olympic Committee's Job Opportunities Program (OJOP), offering flexible 20-hour workweek schedules with fulltime pay and benefits to Olympic and Paralympic athletes and hopefuls. The program began in 1992, and currently more than 200 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes and hopefuls are employed by The Home Depot.
Olympians like Vogtli and Skeleton slider Tristan Gale are very grateful for this program. According to Gale, the “OJOP really helps balance out an athlete's career and real life. This program truly supports paying/supporting the athlete for time needed to train and compete.”
What drives these athletes to become a part of The Home Depot team is a loaded question. Although female athletes have broken down gender barriers and have leveled the playing field, there's one major barrier that they have yet to clear: an equal purse for athletic fetes.
And, as some argue, the purse has been pinched for far too long. Sponsorships, endorsements and prize money are the lifelines of all female athletes; without which, most could not live and breathe the sport they love.
So, why the discrepancy? A common argument is that women's team sports are not nearly as lucrative as men's team sports. But what sells seats? The media. During a 30-day analysis of ESPN's “Sports Center” in 2002, ESPN ran 778 stories about males to a mere 16 about females. What you see is what you get.
The 15 years since 1989 have seen growth in many facets of women's sports – 10 years of the WNBA, the unprecedented attention surrounding the women's World Cup of soccer, increased women's events in the Olympic Games and ESPN's now hugely popular X Games – yet a 15-year study of three Los Angeles network affiliates' women's and men's sports news coverage showed almost no difference in women's sports airtime between 1989 and 2004. (Messner, M.A., Duncan, M.C. & Willms. N. 2006). That's 15 years of getting next to nothing.
For female athletes, media-generated endorsements come and go, or never come at all, so how might an athlete become a household name while paying her bills?
A picture is worth a thousand words – or a few thousand dollars. And in today's fast paced online culture, that picture can reach people around the globe in seconds.
It's simple: sex sells and money talks, and some female athletes are baring it all to supplement their less-than-satisfactory purses and endorsements. Has becoming the center of a sport become synonymous with becoming the centerfold of a magazine?
Olympic medalist Amanda Beard is the most recent in a long list of female athletes who receive more attention for their physical image than for their athletic performance. It's hard to argue with the fact that posing in male magazines creates visibility, and that any photo taken – good or bad – creates publicity. Publicity means money.
Dominique Dawes, former president of the Women's Sports Foundation, noted, “[Posing nude] is a personal choice, and if an athlete wants to portray herself in a certain light, it's up to her… Sports and sex have always sold. I think women have earned the right to make those kinds of decisions.”
As a result, some female athletes decide to put on an orange apron courtesy of The Home Depot and sell kitchen appliances and backyard patios. Others take off a piece of clothing to pose seductively - or with great strength and esteem. Whatever the approach, many female athletes depend on these sources of revenue to buy sporting equipment, stock the fridge with peanut butter, or finally pay the electricity bill on time.
Countless elite female athletes will not find their sport as a sufficient source of income, and for those, “making a living” often looks no more glamorous than it does for the rest of us. Maybe the money is stuck within the pockets of the media who are not spending it on women's sports coverage, or behind the endorser's camera lens to promote the sex behind the gender instead of the strength behind the muscle.
And so, these female athletes are doing whatever it takes to get the job done – on and off the field. Perhaps these athletes struggle to make ends meet while they train so the glory of a gold medal is one inch closer. Or maybe, no matter what, it's for the passion of pursuing and conquering the childhood dreams that live in all of us, for all of us. Now that's something to put your money on.