Here are some of the different ways that skaters have paid for their training:


The best athletes, as I have mentioned before, have corporate sponsors and win money on the World Cup circuit. Some skaters who have come from the world of inline skating still compete in inline, and can live off their inline winnings. A few inline skaters (especially some of the short trackers in Southern California) are actually paid by their inline sponsors to cross over to ice skating.

A lot of skaters are supported by their parents, though only a few skaters get much help beyond their junior years. Parental attitudes towards the sport, and their ability to help out financially, vary greatly among speedskating families. In the world of speedskating, we have parents who have picked up and moved halfway across the country so their kids can train at the Olympic Oval. We have parents who go around begging for sponsors for their kids. We have parents who won Olympic medals and want their kids to do the same, and we have parents who don't even accept speedskating as an activity that their kids should be doing, or parents who think that everything else should come before speedskating.

Many skaters work part time to support their training. Most either have "O-jobs" at Home Depot, or work at the Oval as coaches. Only a few have college degrees and work in their field.

A few skaters at the lower levels have found sponsors, but I will cover sponsorships in more detail in a later post.