The Two-Year Plan : It’s a Short Trip From Albertville to Lillehammer, and U.S. Winter Sports Federations Are Trying to Find the Fare

The U.S. Figure Skating Assn.’s list of sponsors is so long and prominent, it looks like a roll call for the Fortune 500. But the U.S. Bobsled Federation will finish this fiscal year in the black by a mere $41.

The U.S. Luge Assn. recently signed a sponsorship agreement that ensures its financial stability for the next six years and built a state-of-the-art indoor facility. But the U.S. Ski Assn. announced a budget cut this year of more than $1 million and had to slash developmental programs and administrative staff.

The U.S. International Speedskating Assn. and USA Hockey report no extraordinary financial circumstances, but the U.S. Biathlon Assn. is surviving almost solely on funds provided by the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“We’re out there with the old tin cup,” said the USBA’s executive director, Dusty Johnstone.

Whether they are rolling in dough or in nothing but snow, these seven national governing bodies under the USOC’s umbrella have one thing in common. They have 12 months from last Friday to deliver their athletes to the 1994 Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, Norway.

Most winter governing bodies in the United States are accustomed to difficult situations. They oversee sports with high operating costs and virtually no appeal to the public, television networks, sponsors or even potential participants. But preparing athletes for the ’94 Games might be their most daunting challenge yet.

In 1986, the International Olympic Committee voted to move the Winter Games away from the Summer Games, an action favored by the Olympic Committees of most nations because it meant they no longer would have to organize two teams in one year.

But the shift has created a one-time burden for the winter sports governing bodies, which had to begin planning on the day after one Winter Olympics ended at Albertville, France, in 1992 for the next one at Lillehammer 24 months later.

“It’s confusing right now,” said Tom Kelly, spokesman for the U.S. Ski Assn. “We’re not sure whether we’re in a pre-Olympic year or a post-Olympic year.”

For the USSA, 1993 is both.

From a financial standpoint, the ski association experienced its usual decline in sponsorship and revenues after an Olympic year. As a result, Kelly said, the 1993

budget fell more than $1 million short of its goal for the pre-Olympic year.

From a competitive standpoint, however, Kelly said U.S. skiers are either meeting or exceeding expectations. For cross-country skiers and ski jumpers, where not much is expected, it is the former. For Alpine skiers, it is the latter. In the World Alpine Championships last week in Japan, they had four top-five finishes, including silver medals for Julie Parisien and Picabo Street and a bronze for AJ Kitt.

Few of the sports are having problems identifying the athletes they will have at Lillehammer because most of them are the ones they had at Albertville.

Harvey Schiller, the USOC’s executive director, estimated that as many as 75% of the U.S. athletes at Lillehammer will be repeaters. Among prominent athletes who did not retire because the next Winter Games were two years in the future instead of four are speedskaters Bonnie Blair, Dan Jansen and Cathy Turner, figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan, Calla Urbanski and Rocky Marval and skiers Diann Roffe-Steinrotter and Donna Weinbrecht.

Figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, the 1992 women’s gold medalist, is undecided, but Brian Boitano, the 1988 men’s gold medalist, is leaning toward a comeback that he said he would not have contemplated if he’d had to wait until 1996 for another Winter Olympics.

“There’s usually a lot of pain and suffering that goes with building up an Olympic team over a four-year period,” said the biathlon association’s Johnstone. “After an Olympic Games, a lot of athletes say, ‘I’m outta here.’ Often, even those athletes who hang on take two years to get over their post-Olympic depression and start generating enthusiasm again.

“But we’ve avoided all that this time. Most athletes not only didn’t retire after Albertville, they came out of those Games with a clear sense of what they did wrong and how to correct it and a sense of urgency about getting ready for Lillehammer.”

USA Hockey is the only governing body that would have difficulty naming much of its roster today because the NHL has not decided whether to make its players available to Olympic teams. But USA Hockey’s executive director, Baaron Pittenger, said a contingency plan is in place in case the team again has to rely primarily on amateurs.

“Our athletes already are at a fever pitch,” said James Page, the USOC’s director of grants and athletes’ assistance. “It is raising funds for them where some of our governing bodies are behind.”

There are exceptions, such as those governing bodies that persuaded sponsors to buy into two Olympics over the six-year period between 1988 and ’94 instead of one.

“They got twice as much bang for their buck,” said Katie Marquard, executive director of the U.S. International Speedskating Assn.

But other governing bodies are fortunate if they can find sponsors interested in them for even one Olympics.

“We go into corporations where they’ve got 100 requests on their desks,” Johnstone said. “It’s not easy to convince them that they should put their money into biathlon.

“But we happen to be in an environment where we have to do it that way. There’s no government funding. The result is that we go into competitions against smaller countries like Norway and Italy that have 10 times our budget.”

The USOC is attempting to bridge that gap as much as possible before next February. Aware of the added strain on some of the winter national governing bodies because of the proximity of the next Winter Games to the last ones, $2 million from the USOC’s budget has been made available to them through a program called “Team ’94.”

Some governing bodies were more desperate for the money than others. Whereas the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. is using it to rent a house closer than the athletes’ village to the rink in Norway for its competitors and the U.S. International Speedskating Assn. is using it to pay bonuses to athletes for victories on this winter’s World Cup circuit, the U.S. Bobsled Federation would not be able to afford more than two sleds in international competition this year without the money from the USOC.

“They are working on a day-to-day basis,” Schiller said of bobsled officials.

That has been the case since 1991, when financial troubles, including the alleged misappropriation of funds, caused the USOC to take the unprecedented action of assuming the federation’s operations.

The federation almost went bankrupt this year before adding a sponsor and eliminating $325,000 from its budget. Also eliminated were three of five staff jobs. The federation’s Lake Placid, N.Y., office is operated by new Executive Director Matt Roy, a part-time financial officer and an intern.

“I haven’t been able to raise much money,” said Roy, a former driver. “I don’t know if it’s because we’ve got an Olympics coming up so soon after the last one or my inexperience.”

Roy thought he had scored a marketing coup when NASCAR driver Geoff Bodine, spending $130,000 of his money, designed a two-man sled for the U.S. team. But despite a great deal of national publicity surrounding Bodine’s effort, the federation has not been able to get financing for the construction of additional sleds. Also on hold is Bodine’s offer to design a four-man sled if the money is available.

“I thought Geoff’s interest would make it easier than it has been to attract sponsors,” Roy said.

But the money that the bobsled federation has raised has been well spent. Brian Shimer of Naples, Fla., is the world’s leading four-man driver this winter and, with only one race remaining, figures to become the first U.S. driver since Roy in 1987 to win an overall World Cup title.

“You could say the future of the federation is riding in his sled,” Roy said, counting on Shimer’s success to generate more enthusiasm among sponsors.

Shimer would be satisfied with a medal at Lillehammer. He and Herschel Walker were seventh in the two-man competition in 1992.

Schiller said he expects the United States to win about the same number of medals as it did at Albertville, five golds, four silvers and two bronzes.

He is more optimistic about the future because of new winter sports facilities at Milwaukee, Salt Lake City and Lake Placid that are either completed or under construction. All of them are scheduled to be available within a few months after the 1994 Winter Olympics.

At that point, governing bodies for winter sports will have one more advantage in preparing athletes that they did not have after the 1992 Winter Olympics. Four more years.