THE OLYMPICS / WINTER GAMES AT ALBERTVILLE : USOC Puts Money Where Medals Are : Reform: Increased financial help for American athletes results in improved international achievement.

Ten years after Congress enacted the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 to define the U.S. Olympic Committee’s role in preparing the nation’s athletes for international competition, the USOC looked in the mirror and flexed its muscles.

The mirror image did not flex back.

Top-heavy but thin everywhere else, the USOC decided to shape up, starting with the appointment in February of 1988 of an Olympic Overview Commission.

During the 1988 Winter Olympics at Calgary, Canada, then-USOC President Robert Helmick introduced New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner as the commission’s chairman. The news conference was so hastily arranged that it implied a sense of urgency that USOC officials said later was not intended. But, under the circumstances, it was impossible to interpret it otherwise.

The United States eventually won a disappointing six medals and finished ninth in the standings at Calgary. Only once since the first Winter Olympics in 1924 had the United States fallen to such depths.

A year later, the 11-member Steinbrenner Commission, as it became known, released a 21-page report offering proposals to assist the USOC in its “primary goal” of winning medals.

There has been considerable debate since then, even among commission members, about whether the report should have concluded that winning medals is the primary goal or merely one of the goals. Considering that the pugnacious Steinbrenner had final approval, it is hardly surprising that the report was weighted toward winning.

In any case, all involved with the USOC are getting ready to share in what they expect to be 16 days of glory at the 1992 Winter Olympics, which will begin next Saturday here in the Savoy region of France with the opening ceremony at Albertville and two ice hockey games at Meribel.

Based on recent international competition, it appears that the United States will at least equal its best performance with 12 medals and could win as many as 15.

There are a number of reasons for the anticipated improvement, among them the collapse of the sports systems in former Olympic superpowers, the Soviet Union and East Germany; rule changes that favor less-technologically advanced countries such as the United States in bobsled and luge events; and the admission of new sports to the program. In one of those, moguls freestyle skiing, the United States is expected to win at least two medals.

“Obviously, the overview commission also has had a lot to do with it,” USOC spokesman Mike Moran said. “We aren’t where we need to be but, from previous years, it’s a quantum leap. The teams we send to Albertville and Barcelona (for the Summer Olympics) this year will be the best-funded teams ever.”

In brief, the commission’s proposals, adopted in 1989, streamlined the USOC’s administration, reduced the size and budgets of internal committees, established a better relationship between the USOC and school and college organizations and, most significantly, directed more money toward the athletes.

“The support given our athletes is the most important single issue the commission has addressed,” the report said.

According to Carol Brown, a former rower from Seattle who heads the USOC’s athlete support committee, that process had begun in 1980, when athletes who were prevented from competing at Moscow because of the U.S. boycott needed more financial assistance so they could stay in training for another chance at the Summer Olympics in 1984.

“We had a lot of athletes staying around longer and, as we continue to see, they discovered they didn’t have to retire as early as they were in some sports,” she said. “Physically, they could continue competing, but they also needed jobs and resources.”

The USOC sponsored programs in subsequent years that gave athletes part-time jobs, college tuition assistance and catastrophic health insurance. But during the four-year period 1985 through 1988, the USOC used only $2.2 million of its $149.9 million expense budget for direct payments to athletes. In contrast, $20.8 million was spent on administration.

In the budget covering 1989 through 1992, the USOC will spend about the same amount on administration. But because income has almost doubled, thanks largely to the increase in corporate sponsorships, that represents only 7.5% of the budget. At the same time, direct payments to athletes will increase by more than 1,000% to $25.8 million, or 9.3% of the budget.

That is in addition to the $142.3 million that athletes receive in indirect payments, including grants to cover costs of developmental programs for the individuals sports’ national governing bodies, training centers at Colorado Springs, Colo., and Lake Placid, N.Y.; sports medicine, scientific research, drug testing and preparation for the Olympics, Pan American Games and U.S. Olympic Festival.

“That’s a tremendous leap forward,” Michael Plant of Richmond, Va., a former speedskater who is chairman of the USOC’s athletes’ advisory council, said of the increase in direct payments. “I’m still blown away by people who say we shouldn’t be giving any money to athletes. This isn’t the ‘40s. Representing your country in international competition isn’t a part-time job any more.”

But despite the dramatic increase, it still pays like one.

Before he resigned as president last year, Helmick called the $25.8 million in direct payments to athletes “woefully inadequate.”

Athletes chosen for the program based on need and performance receive $2,500-$10,000 a year, although some winter-sports athletes received an additional $2,500 in 1991 as an advance on this year’s payments to aid them in preparing for the Olympics. Combined with direct payments they receive from their own sports’ national governing bodies, some athletes can earn $20,000 to $30,000 a year.

But Olympic and Pan American Games athletes who earn five figures from participation in sport alone are still among the vast minority. A USOC survey last year of 4,114 potential Olympians revealed that their average annual income from all sources is $12,404 and their average annual expenditures are $13,404.

“Few of our governing bodies have the resources to be able to provide major sums of support,” Brown said. “There’s two or three, but the rest aren’t now and never will be.”

Asked how long it would take for the USOC and the governing bodies to provide enough support for the majority of athletes to cover their expenses, she said, “Light years.”

Added USOC Vice President Michael Lenard, a former team handball player from Los Angeles: “We can’t raise enough money to give athletes the amount I would consider to be sufficient. But our task for the future is to take it to the next level.”

That is expected to be achieved before the 1996 Summer Olympics at Atlanta. Regardless of the results from Albertville, the USOC has scheduled a meeting for March to examine the effectiveness of its financial programs. But it is virtually certain that money allotted to direct payments for athletes will increase between 1993 and 1996. In the next four-year budget, expected to total about $325 million, USOC members have voted that the athletes will receive 10% in direct payments.

Will that eventually translate into more medals?

There is evidence to suggest that it might. Since athletes began receiving increased financial support, USOC statistics reveal that the average world ranking for U.S. competitors has improved from 19.71 in 1989 to 16.76 in 1990 to 13.44 last year.

“Our goal is to help our athletes do the very best they can,” Lenard said. “I have no doubt that if we help them do the best they can, we will win medals.”

But the bottom line, Brown said, is that U.S. athletes, in order to reach the medal stand, will still have to continue to rely on the intangibles.

“Money can’t buy a medal,” she said. “I have seen how much our dollars help, but I’ve also seen that we have athletes who find a way to succeed on almost nothing. It still comes down to motivation, commitment and desire.”

Where the Money Goes Distribution of U.S. Olympic Committee funds for the four-year periods before the Olympics of 1988 and 1992.

TOTAL EXPENSE BUDGET 1985-88: $149.9 million 1989-92: $277.2 million EXPENSES AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL BUDGET DIRECT ATHLETE SUPPORT 1985-88: $2.2 million, 1.5% 1989-92: $25.8 million, 9.3% INDIRECT ATHLETE SUPPORT 1985-88: $81.4 million, 54.3% 1989-92: $142.3 million, 51.3% ADMINISTRATION 1985-88: $20.8 million, 13.9% 1989-92: $20.6 million, 7.5% FUND-RAISING 1985-88: $22.7 million, 15.1% 1989-92: $24.2 million, 8.7% CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS 1985-88: $4.7 million, 3.1% 1989-92: $34.7 million, 12.5% MISCELLANEOUS 1985-88: $18.1 million, 12.1% 1989-92: $29.6 million, 10.7%