Training in Vain?

Four hours a day, six days a week, Cara Heads-Lane trains for the Olympic Games.

She has no corporate sponsors and no endorsement contracts. Her husband works two jobs to help cover the couple’s expenses.

If she qualifies for Team USA, her parents might not be able to afford the trip from Orange County to Australia.

She does not ask for sympathy. She does not lift weights to make money. Her story is a familiar one among American athletes in such relatively obscure sports as fencing, field hockey and, yes, weightlifting. If the American athlete is not winning, American television is not interested.

But now the U.S. Olympic Committee, in the person of new chief executive Norm Blake, seemingly has turned on her. If the American athlete is not winning, the new USOC is not interested, at least not before slashing funding to his or her sport.

“If you take the money out of the picture, there would be no incentive [to participate] except recreation,” said Heads-Lane, a graduate of Newport Harbor High, “and recreation doesn’t get you to the Olympic Games.”

In February, the USOC hired Blake, a cost-cutting corporate executive with no sports background, and gave him a mandate to reform the economic structure of the organization. Last Saturday, the USOC executive committee approved Blake’s proposal to shift funding from sports that do not produce medals to sports that do.

Blake’s concept is simple and bottom-line: Given a finite amount of money, should we not spend more on sports in which the United States succeeds and less on sports in which a U.S. medal is little more than a dream?

“I understand what he’s trying to say,” Heads-Lane said. “But the bottom line is, you need money to live.”

Heads-Lane, 22, who is among the finest women weightlifters in the nation, is not getting rich off the U.S. Olympic Committee.

The USOC budgeted $160 million for grants to 45 sports federations--including USA Weightlifting--in the last four years. Heads-Lane said she receives a stipend of $1,000 per month from USA Weightlifting. She earned a $20,000 bonus for her performance at the world championships, she said.

“It’s incentive money,” she said. “You need to lift well to make anything in the sport. It’s no NBA salary.”

If the USOC slashes funding for weightlifting, the U.S. women could be paying for the failures of the men. Women will compete in Olympic weightlifting for the first time this summer.

Since 1964, the U.S. has won three medals in weightlifting--two in 1984, when the Soviet bloc boycott of the Los Angeles Games kept many of the world’s strongest men home.

The international weightlifting federation allocates Olympic bids based on performance at the world championships. The U.S. men got two spots, out of a possible eight. The U.S. women got four spots, out of a possible four.

Men compete in eight weight classes, women in seven. In the Olympics, countries can enter no more than two athletes in any class. For Olympic selection, the U.S. ranks its wrestlers in one performance-adjusted group, not by classes.

Heads-Lane ranks fourth in the United States, with Olympic trials scheduled for July. Since USA Weightlifting selects the Olympic team based on performance in several major competitions, not just the trials, Heads-Lane describes herself as “confident” about winning a spot on Team USA.

“It’s not like I have to get really strong in four months,” she said.

A medal is not out of the question. Heads-Lane, competing in the 75-kilogram (about 165 pounds) weight class, won a silver medal at the Pan American Games last year and placed fourth at the 1998 world championships.

That kind of success ought to draw the attention of Blake, who promises not to implement any funding cuts before meeting with officials from every sport to discuss Olympic results and potential.

In the meantime, Heads-Lane and her family must contend with a personal funding issue. If she qualifies for the Olympics, the USOC will provide her family with tickets to her events.

The USOC does not pay to fly family members to Australia. Heads-Lane hopes her parents, husband and sister can attend, but they gasped at the so-called discount rates available for families, including airfare of $1,495 per person and hotel rooms from $859 to $1,895 for three nights.

Want tickets to opening or closing ceremonies, or other events? You pay. Want to arrange a cheaper hotel room? Sorry, all booked.

Said her mother, Cathy: “We’re trying to see if there’s a place to camp.”