Monday, February 4, 2002
Financial gain for the Pain
Calgary skeleton competitor searching for gold at Salt Lake
By CAMERON MAXWELL -- Calgary Sun
For Jeff Pain, a gold medal in Salt Lake might mean more than the glory and national pride that comes with the huge achievement.
A gold medal at the Winter Games could also bring lucrative financial offers for the Calgarian skeleton competitor, which would go a long way to helping him support his wife, Alyson, and infant son, Kyle.
"A gold wouldn't change my personal life -- who I am -- but it might make my financial situation a little better. I'd definitely have less debt in my life," said Pain, 31, a two-time gold medallist on the skeleton World Cup circuit.
"I don't think there's a single amateur athlete who couldn't use whatever financial help might be given to him or her."
But Pain, a Calgarian who supports his family on the $1,100 per month he gets from the federal government as a carded athlete, realizes even a gold medal may not be enough to attract dollars from corporate sponsors.
"I have to keep in mind that in Canada, sponsors are hard to come by," he said.
With skeleton returning to the Olympic spotlight for the first time since 1948, the sport is going to get a huge boost just by being a Winter Games competition again and will pick up all the media attention that comes with it, which just might get sponsors to tune in and open their cheque books.
"Skeleton would be a good sport for sponsors, I think, because it's something the public is really going to like," said Pain, who finished fourth overall in World Cup standings this season and is certainly a medal contender.
As a young athlete, Pain swam competitively, competed in basketball, racquet sports and track and also tried his hand at bobsleigh.
"In bobsleigh I just wasn't good enough," laughs Pain, a landscape architect, who then went on to try his luck at luge but struck out there as well. They told me I was too old for luge, so I got into skeleton."
He was hooked immediately by the thrill of zooming head-first at over 120 km/h and hasn't looked back, winning the Canadian championship the last two years.
2002 Games Skeleton Coverage
