US Ski Team----funding notions

kirjoitti:

I suspect that the gov't/social supports in these countries provide
what advertising-only support couldn't hope to.

I honestly think you have a somewhat exaggerated or dreamish picture of
the state of affairs here in XC heaven:-)

There is no fancy gov't support outside the federation budget, there's
no extra money from municipalities or whatever. (The tracks are
maintained municipally, though.) The sponsors look hard at the cost and
value of sponsoring sports in general and XC in particular before they
part with their money. (The national visibility of XC is higher than in
the U.S., but OTOH the market is smaller.)

The only social support that I know of comes from the volunteers who
work at club level. (It is of vital importance.) At a stretch one might
call the paltry sums local companies or small entrepreneurs pay for
advertising which they know won't generate much extra sales social
support. (But there aren't any nominal company or municipality jobs for
skiers, for instance.)
The money will at best amount to paying for travel to races and maybe
one week's camp in Lapland, but mostly it all comes from daddy's
pockets; the local sportshop will give a nice discount, but everyone
still buys his own gear and waxes. (Fortunately XC is still cheaper
than icehockey...)


What about the community college ski schools of Scandi? It seems like
they might provide a key link between junior programs and the national
teams.

Isn't college something you go after high school? The Scandi ski
schools are "upper secondary schools" only, i.e. the last three years
of American high school. (There aren't all that many of them and I'd
bet the majority of current Swedish and Norwegian elites didn't attend
them.) To the best of my knowledge there's no college or other
follow-up "ski school" system anywhere. (In Finland, which still clings
to universal military service, young sportsmen can enroll in a special
unit for their twelve months of service, though.)


I recall in Pete's book that he went over as a young person and
hopped right into such a program---it might've even been free-school.

All education up to high school level is free in Scandinavia, including
bed and board if you leave home to go to a special school. (Most higher
education is basically free, too, but you have to cover your own costs
of living outside the rather meagre grant everyone is entitled to - and
there's no US-style sports scholarship system here.)


Anders (who hates to burst your bubble, but it ain't Utopia here,
either)

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
On 1 Feb 2006 10:33:48 -0800, wrote:

OK, the USST needs to raise money.

Other countries have tons more money than we do for our sport. Where do
the other countries get their money? Only one place: their governments.

Not true. The Norwegian national team and many others have businesses
as sponsors.

Indeed, there is very little government-sponsored sports in Norway, at
least at the elite level.

Terje

--
-
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

Glad you wrote this. Myths abound. One small qualification, I think,
and this may speak to the Vordenberg reference, is that if your high
schools are in the European style, they last one year longer (or later)
than the American. At 19, that's an important year for development.

Gene


"Anders" wrote:
Isn't college something you go after high school? The Scandi ski
schools are "upper secondary schools" only, i.e. the last three years
of American high school. (There aren't all that many of them and I'd
bet the majority of current Swedish and Norwegian elites didn't attend
them.) To the best of my knowledge there's no college or other
follow-up "ski school" system anywhere. (In Finland, which still
clings to universal military service, young sportsmen can enroll in a
special unit for their twelve months of service, though.)


I recall in Pete's book that he went over as a young person and
hopped right into such a program---it might've even been
free-school.

All education up to high school level is free in Scandinavia,
including bed and board if you leave home to go to a special school.
(Most higher education is basically free, too, but you have to cover
your own costs of living outside the rather meagre grant everyone is
entitled to - and there's no US-style sports scholarship system here.)


Anders (who hates to burst your bubble, but it ain't Utopia here,
either)

Gene Goldenfeld kirjoitti:

Glad you wrote this. Myths abound. One small qualification, I think,
and this may speak to the Vordenberg reference, is that if your high
schools are in the European style, they last one year longer (or later)
than the American. At 19, that's an important year for development.

They cover 10th to 12th grades and one usually enters 1st grade the
year one reaches the age of 7. But, indeed, these kind of sports school
offer an option to stretch it ouf for four years.


Anders (who does remember the times when every graduating class had up
a couple of usually male students who had doubled one year at some
point...)

In the U.S. it's age of 6. That's one year already, without extending
it. Therein lies a common misimpression when it's assumed everyone
does it the American way, and when they don't it's seen as some form of
unfair advantage, if not cheating.

Gene

"Anders" wrote:


Gene Goldenfeld kirjoitti:

Glad you wrote this. Myths abound. One small qualification, I
think, and this may speak to the Vordenberg reference, is that if
your high schools are in the European style, they last one year
longer (or later) than the American. At 19, that's an important
year for development.

They cover 10th to 12th grades and one usually enters 1st grade the
year one reaches the age of 7. But, indeed, these kind of sports
school offer an option to stretch it ouf for four years.


Anders (who does remember the times when every graduating class had up
a couple of usually male students who had doubled one year at some
point...)

So what kind of support is there?

I see options in your explanation for:

*The federation money must be pretty big---and I suppose it would be
big for the US, too, if we had a history of results like our
snowboarders have, for instance. However, our Canoe & Kayak team has
lots of results but probably still not much funding.

*Reasonably well-off parents. Probably a parent doesn't have to be THAT
rich to support a son/daughter who's a ski racer. I wonder what the
annual cost might be to lead the ski-bum lifestyle. I did it a few
years on my own at well under $15K/yr in the 80's but only at a
middling level. With mom and dad working whitecollar jobs that's not
that much dough to help subsidize.

*The municipal ski trails are mentioned. That helps.

*Not much work in the ski biz? Whew. When I tried this stunt I just
headed to the mountains and got a job building trail, setting tracks,
etc., at a big xc ski area. It was enough for room, board, gas. Not
bad. Not hard to get. Was only part-time. I'd think that in Scandiland
there'd be even more businesses who might try to make some room for a
top hopeful.

I still think I have a point that in Scandiland there's more social
support of all kinds than in the US and that the US will never match
this. Isn't there socialized healthcare? What's a min. hi-deduct plan
in the US these days for a single person? $2K/yr in premiums? What's
our food and rent situation like compared to resources? Like, I suspect
there isn't much of a homeless problem over there but a skier could
find himself living in his car quicklike here or worse, well, maybe a
tent wouldn't be so bad. A skier isn't likely to have access to any
unemployment comp here. I'd say that here in the US a person
considering skiing has in his mind: no support, no safety net---if you
can get a job, that's all there is, after that, bottomless.

My bottom line is that we need to look to what we DO have lots of and
that's millionaires! : ) ---Maybe not in Mnpls, though, where they
are apparently bitter. Maybe the ticket is to try just up the hill from
Silicon Valley...

Maybe a decent recipe for the post-college US hopeful is indeed a
part-time job in a ski town---as long as he has room, board, and a few
free hours a day, plus winter weekends, he's cool. (I do recall getting
the winter weekends off being tough at my tracksetting job, but I at
least got half the weekends off.) What would be sad is if he won the
Natl's and wanted to shoot for the Olys but still only had half those
weekends free. Hmmm, maybe he could get a tracksetting job in
Scandiland---to give him access to WC experience that way.

--JP

On 3 Feb 2006 07:20:30 -0800, wrote:

So what kind of support is there?

I see options in your explanation for:

*The federation money must be pretty big---and I suppose it would be
big for the US, too, if we had a history of results like our
snowboarders have, for instance. However, our Canoe & Kayak team has
lots of results but probably still not much funding.

*Reasonably well-off parents. Probably a parent doesn't have to be THAT
rich to support a son/daughter who's a ski racer. I wonder what the
annual cost might be to lead the ski-bum lifestyle. I did it a few
years on my own at well under $15K/yr in the 80's but only at a
middling level. With mom and dad working whitecollar jobs that's not
that much dough to help subsidize.

*The municipal ski trails are mentioned. That helps.

*Not much work in the ski biz? Whew. When I tried this stunt I just
headed to the mountains and got a job building trail, setting tracks,
etc., at a big xc ski area. It was enough for room, board, gas. Not
bad. Not hard to get. Was only part-time. I'd think that in Scandiland
there'd be even more businesses who might try to make some room for a
top hopeful.

I still think I have a point that in Scandiland there's more social
support of all kinds than in the US and that the US will never match
this. Isn't there socialized healthcare? What's a min. hi-deduct plan
in the US these days for a single person? $2K/yr in premiums? What's
our food and rent situation like compared to resources? Like, I suspect
there isn't much of a homeless problem over there but a skier could
find himself living in his car quicklike here or worse, well, maybe a
tent wouldn't be so bad. A skier isn't likely to have access to any
unemployment comp here. I'd say that here in the US a person
considering skiing has in his mind: no support, no safety net---if you
can get a job, that's all there is, after that, bottomless.

My bottom line is that we need to look to what we DO have lots of and
that's millionaires! : ) ---Maybe not in Mnpls, though, where they
are apparently bitter. Maybe the ticket is to try just up the hill from
Silicon Valley...

Maybe a decent recipe for the post-college US hopeful is indeed a
part-time job in a ski town---as long as he has room, board, and a few
free hours a day, plus winter weekends, he's cool. (I do recall getting
the winter weekends off being tough at my tracksetting job, but I at
least got half the weekends off.) What would be sad is if he won the
Natl's and wanted to shoot for the Olys but still only had half those
weekends free. Hmmm, maybe he could get a tracksetting job in
Scandiland---to give him access to WC experience that way.

--JP


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Jeff, it's hard to take your seriously when you write "Scandiland."

JFT

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But, JT, I've never asked YOU to take me seriously.

BTW, I use it as a light term in an informal discussion about broad
social matters just so people don't take things too seriously.

The locals have never seemed too upset about it.

PS: JT, what made you think the post was about me anyway? Since we're
discussing prospects for ski racing maybe we should just stick to that.
My choice of slang hardly matters.