Cleaning House for 2005: NO MORE WHINING
OK, so now that Nationals are over and I have made the sprint world cups (isn't that weird???), it is time for me to wrap up my analysis of how speedskaters fund their training. I believe I'm covering some issues that many people simply refuse to talk about, in the hopes that they will just go away. However, I feel like I am whining sometimes, and my own complaining is starting to make me sick to my stomach! So, I'm just going to squish my last 4 points into a single post, so that I will get this over with and not think about it again.
In Part 6, I talked about what it was like to work a real job in the field of science while training on an elite level. In the remaining parts, I intended to discuss issues relating to the search for sponsorship. In Part 7, I wanted to share some of my own funny stories of rejection by various potential sponsors, and an especially funny experience of being repeatedly blown off by an Olympic sports writer when I tried to get her to promote me as one of Detroit's (where my parents live) future Olympians. Ha-ha-ha.
In Part 8, I wanted to tell some stories that illustrate how arbitrary the sponsorship search is for athletes at my level and below, and how much it depends on "connections", and how little it depends on actual competitive credentials.
I've decided instead to just list the main points I have learned from my sponsorship search, in the hopes that someone might find these suggestions helpful and learn from my mistakes.
Here they are:
1. As I have just mentioned, the aspiring Olympian who just barely learned to speedskate but has personal connections to a company is more likely to find a sponsor than the skater who has World Cup experience but no corporate connections. (This is from my own experience. I've seen it happen at least 4-5 times here at the Utah Olympic Oval.)
2. Sending in a sponsorship package is not like sending in a job resume or a college application!!! Even if you've had success in these other areas, you should expect a great deal more rejection in your sponsorship search before you find something.
3. You should consider getting an agent to handle your sponsorship communications. That way, you won't have to deal with the rejection first-hand, which can have a detrimental effect on your self-esteem and skating performance. If you can arrange a deal with your agent where they work only for a percentage of the sponsorships they find for you, then you lose nothing, and only stand to gain.
4. Sponsors who already sponsor your team are actually less likely to sponsor you as an individual because it is not likely to be an additional benefit for them.
5. Your "potential" is not something you can realistically sell to a company, because it is so unpredictable.
6. If you are on a national team, it can be hard to convince people that you are not already getting everything you need to live and train.
------------
In Part 9 of my analysis of athlete funding, the real fun and controversy begins. It is here that I planned to weigh in on the US Speedskating Sponsor Logo Fight.
First of all, I'd like to say that almost all the athletes I've talked to, especially those on the highest levels of this sport, believe that the Athlete Agreement that we sign is inherently unfair. They feel that they are up against the wall and have to make the following choice: "Either I sign all my rights away, or I can't be a speedskater."
For myself personally, I never felt that I had much of a chance of obtaining sponsorship, so I just went ahead and signed the agreement without much thought. I believed that most of the things our sponsors paid for were things from which I benefited, such as travel to competitions, free ice time, and coaching. However, as time went on, as I had my own experiences in this sport and observed the experiences of other athletes, I realized that there is a lot more to this issue than meets the eye.
I now believe that because athletes come into this sport with vastly different backgrounds and vastly different needs, they DO NOT BENEFIT EQUALLY from all the things that our sponsors pay for, and therefore should not necessarily be FORCED to wear certain logos. For example, a few of US Speedskating's top performers do not train with the National Team because they feel that a different program works better for them, for whatever reason. Therefore, they do not benefit from National Team coaching or sports science, BUT are still forced to wear logos of sponsors whose money pay for these things. Because of this, such an athlete CANNOT wear the logo of a sponsor he finds for himself. Is this right?
I believe that because of the differences in the needs of our athletes, we need to be a lot more flexible in how we handle the issue of sponsor logos.
----
In Part 10, I wanted to describe a specific instance in which I felt that an aspect of sports science, on which U.S. Speedskating spends a great deal of money, was used in a way that was harmful to several members of the team.
This involved convincing a group of athletes that there was a team of scientists checking on their training data to make sure that they were adapting properly to a training program. Then, once the season was over and half the team had gotten severely overtrained and performed very poorly, the team was informed that the coaching staff were aware that they were getting overtrained, but the decision was made to keep pushing them "in the interest of collecting data for the benefit of future generations of speedskaters."
I don't know about you, but in Eva's Protocol of Ethics in Sports Science, such an experiment would be considered a "Big No-No."
---------
So, this marks the end of my analysis of speedskater funding. I hope to move on from here, to overcome the disadvantages I have faced in the past, and to focus on skating faster.
OK, so now that Nationals are over and I have made the sprint world cups (isn't that weird???), it is time for me to wrap up my analysis of how speedskaters fund their training. I believe I'm covering some issues that many people simply refuse to talk about, in the hopes that they will just go away. However, I feel like I am whining sometimes, and my own complaining is starting to make me sick to my stomach! So, I'm just going to squish my last 4 points into a single post, so that I will get this over with and not think about it again.
In Part 6, I talked about what it was like to work a real job in the field of science while training on an elite level. In the remaining parts, I intended to discuss issues relating to the search for sponsorship. In Part 7, I wanted to share some of my own funny stories of rejection by various potential sponsors, and an especially funny experience of being repeatedly blown off by an Olympic sports writer when I tried to get her to promote me as one of Detroit's (where my parents live) future Olympians. Ha-ha-ha.
In Part 8, I wanted to tell some stories that illustrate how arbitrary the sponsorship search is for athletes at my level and below, and how much it depends on "connections", and how little it depends on actual competitive credentials.
I've decided instead to just list the main points I have learned from my sponsorship search, in the hopes that someone might find these suggestions helpful and learn from my mistakes.
Here they are:
1. As I have just mentioned, the aspiring Olympian who just barely learned to speedskate but has personal connections to a company is more likely to find a sponsor than the skater who has World Cup experience but no corporate connections. (This is from my own experience. I've seen it happen at least 4-5 times here at the Utah Olympic Oval.)
2. Sending in a sponsorship package is not like sending in a job resume or a college application!!! Even if you've had success in these other areas, you should expect a great deal more rejection in your sponsorship search before you find something.
3. You should consider getting an agent to handle your sponsorship communications. That way, you won't have to deal with the rejection first-hand, which can have a detrimental effect on your self-esteem and skating performance. If you can arrange a deal with your agent where they work only for a percentage of the sponsorships they find for you, then you lose nothing, and only stand to gain.
4. Sponsors who already sponsor your team are actually less likely to sponsor you as an individual because it is not likely to be an additional benefit for them.
5. Your "potential" is not something you can realistically sell to a company, because it is so unpredictable.
6. If you are on a national team, it can be hard to convince people that you are not already getting everything you need to live and train.
------------
In Part 9 of my analysis of athlete funding, the real fun and controversy begins. It is here that I planned to weigh in on the US Speedskating Sponsor Logo Fight.
First of all, I'd like to say that almost all the athletes I've talked to, especially those on the highest levels of this sport, believe that the Athlete Agreement that we sign is inherently unfair. They feel that they are up against the wall and have to make the following choice: "Either I sign all my rights away, or I can't be a speedskater."
For myself personally, I never felt that I had much of a chance of obtaining sponsorship, so I just went ahead and signed the agreement without much thought. I believed that most of the things our sponsors paid for were things from which I benefited, such as travel to competitions, free ice time, and coaching. However, as time went on, as I had my own experiences in this sport and observed the experiences of other athletes, I realized that there is a lot more to this issue than meets the eye.
I now believe that because athletes come into this sport with vastly different backgrounds and vastly different needs, they DO NOT BENEFIT EQUALLY from all the things that our sponsors pay for, and therefore should not necessarily be FORCED to wear certain logos. For example, a few of US Speedskating's top performers do not train with the National Team because they feel that a different program works better for them, for whatever reason. Therefore, they do not benefit from National Team coaching or sports science, BUT are still forced to wear logos of sponsors whose money pay for these things. Because of this, such an athlete CANNOT wear the logo of a sponsor he finds for himself. Is this right?
I believe that because of the differences in the needs of our athletes, we need to be a lot more flexible in how we handle the issue of sponsor logos.
----
In Part 10, I wanted to describe a specific instance in which I felt that an aspect of sports science, on which U.S. Speedskating spends a great deal of money, was used in a way that was harmful to several members of the team.
This involved convincing a group of athletes that there was a team of scientists checking on their training data to make sure that they were adapting properly to a training program. Then, once the season was over and half the team had gotten severely overtrained and performed very poorly, the team was informed that the coaching staff were aware that they were getting overtrained, but the decision was made to keep pushing them "in the interest of collecting data for the benefit of future generations of speedskaters."
I don't know about you, but in Eva's Protocol of Ethics in Sports Science, such an experiment would be considered a "Big No-No."
---------
So, this marks the end of my analysis of speedskater funding. I hope to move on from here, to overcome the disadvantages I have faced in the past, and to focus on skating faster.
posted by Eva at 10:18 AM
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