What it costs to be an elite figure skater like the 'Quad God'

0:01NPR.

0:11This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. Here at The Indicator, we've been following the Winter Olympics. And, you know, I, like many other people, love figure skating. I love the ice dancing. I like the short program. I like the free skate. I like the twizzles. I like the lifts. So we have invited Oregon Public Broadcasting's Lillian Carebake on to help us understand what it actually costs to get to the Olympics as a figure skater. Hi, Waylon. I'm so excited to be here. I am primarily an economics reporter, so it is such a delight to have two weeks every four years where I get to talk about knife shoes instead.

0:52This is your moment to shine in a slightly different way than how you usually shine. So will we get to see you at the Olympics this week? Absolutely not. I did skate competitively, but I didn't really realize how expensive it was going to get when I started. And that leads us to today's indicator, which is one million dollars. That's right. It can cost an average of one million dollars to make the Olympics. That's Timothy Gable's estimate. He won an Olympic bronze medal in 2002. Pretty daunting. It is a million dollar bet on like a maybe of a maybe of a maybe. After the break, how the costs grow as skaters climb the ranks.

1:36We talked to three U.S. Olympic medalists on how top skaters, like most Olympic athletes, aren't breaking even.

1:46Okay, Lillian, walk me through this. A kid starts ice skating. Where does the money really start to kick in? Well, when I started, I did group lessons through the single jumps, pretty much. And then once you start jumping doubles and competing locally, I needed a private coach, and that's pretty standard for most skaters. It's also when the expenses start to explode. Right. So last week we talked about how the U.S. is fairly unique because unlike other countries, it doesn't invest federal taxpayer money in youth athletics or Olympic development. Yep. Here in the U.S., it's your family that picks up the bill.

2:21And this is how 2014 Olympic bronze medalist Ashley Wagner described figure skating here in the U.S. Astronomically unaffordable. I was told by my parents that I could do literally any other sport other than equestrian because that's how expensive figure skating was. Okay, so let's stay away from equestrian expenses. But sports are getting expensive for everyone. In ice skating, though, it's a whole different knife-shoe game. Yeah, I mean, part of that has to do with the knife shoes. The equipment is expensive. Once you start landing double jumps or doing lifts, you need skates that can withstand that force.

3:00So blades can run up to$1 ,000, and then the skates that these athletes are on, another$1 ,000,$1 ,500. I'm hearing the cash register sounds. We're at about, what, like$2 ,000? But$2 ,000 boots don't get you to a million dollars. Yeah, so the real sink is ice time and coaching. And that's where you can start to see who can move up the levels and who can't. It's not a coincidence that the U.S. men's Olympic team includes several skaters whose parents were elite skaters themselves. Three Team USA skaters this year had parents who were Olympians. So you could almost say that being an Olympic skater is hereditary.

3:38Right, but not genetically, financially. That's because if your parents are Olympic-level coaches, you're getting free, top-tier training from the time that you're very tiny. Take Ilya Malinan. He is the 21-year-old gold medal favorite. He does the quadruple axle, something that experts used to think was physically impossible until he did it. I saw him wearing his tank top that says quad god. He has like a lot of shirts that say quad god. Here's the thing. He grew up in the rink while his parents coached. That much ice time is part of the reason he was landing quadruple jumps at 13 years old. Bronze medalist Timothy Gable said most skaters are paying for every minute they're on the ice.

4:21Just to go and have a normal training day, you're looking at$90 a day for ice time. for a minimum of five days a week. And Ashley says that doesn't even include coaching. Our lesson would be about 120 bucks, and then you have probably two or three hours of lessons a day. It gets expensive really quickly. And also, as skaters get better, many have to move to train with high-level coaches. And that sometimes means moving states or even across the world. Timothy Gable and his mom moved states when he was 11 years old. Your family or whomever has to spend a boatload of money just to get you kind of in the mix.

5:04And all of this is before meaningful financial help from U.S. figure skating. Yeah, so U.S. figure skating is the sport's national governing body. And its funding doesn't usually kick in until you're competing internationally at the junior level in your teens. Until then, it's entirely on the family. They have to pay for travel to competitions. By the way, that includes coaches' flights and rooms. And then on top of that, they have to cover a chaperone's expenses. Just to qualify for a nationals, let alone an international, the travel expenses in a given season can be$10 ,000 out of pocket, if not more.

5:40Now, once our athletes do qualify for the majority of internationals, U.S. Figure Skating is paying for that. So U.S. figure skating will assign funding to these skaters based on their world ranking. The junior skaters get less, but our top-ranked U.S. figure skaters get about$20 ,000 per season. According to Ashley, That money goes so fast. A program to get choreographed can cost$10 ,000 to$15 ,000. So you can have your entire funding almost dried up from just one program. And that's supposed to last you the entire season. Okay, it is time to talk choreography. Yeah, this is a judge sport. So the choreography and the costumes can genuinely make or break a skater's ability to move up the ranks.

6:26Judges aren't just looking at whether or not you land jumps. They're evaluating musicality, interpretation, how convincingly a skater sells a program. That means choreography and costuming is not extra. They are competitive tools. And let's not forget all that tulle, the sparkly costumes. They matter a lot. And they cost a lot once you make it to the higher levels. Oh, anywhere from$2 ,000 to$5 ,000. Yeah, and that's just for a single competition dress. And skaters need at least two costumes per season. Then you double that number in pairs and ice dance. Okay, pairs and ice dance is where the economics start to get really strange.

7:10That's because there's this massive gender imbalance in the sport. There's roughly one girl for every 200 boys. In economics, we call that a supply-side problem. It is a supply-side problem. And that low supply means girls and their families often end up subsidizing boys. It's extremely common for the families of female figure skaters to pay not just for training, but for their male partners. Living expenses, housing, coaching, and ice time. And sometimes citizenship expenses because skaters often change countries. Once skaters reach international competitions, they earn prize money. But it's nowhere near enough to offset all those costs.

7:46Yeah. So at the very top of the sport, the Grand Prix final champion wins$25 ,000. OK, now that did sound like a lot of money until I heard about how much choreography and costumes cost. And let's not forget, many coaches actually take 15 percent of an athlete's prize money. But the prize money is just one piece. Let's talk about sponsorship. This is why the Olympics is so important financially to figure skaters. The game gives a niche sport a global audience. And with that comes big money. Yes, I have seen all these commercials with figure skaters in them this Olympics, especially for medication.

8:21So many pharmaceuticals. I know. How American is that, right? But Ashley says it's very tempting to take that money when it's available when the Olympic spotlight is on them. The money that they offer you is obscene. And when you're in a sport that is obscenely expensive, it makes it very hard to turn away from that. Does it feel ethical? Not in the slightest, but it's very obvious why it exists in this sport and why athletes take those sponsorships. Pear skater Danny O'Shea might take advantage of those sponsorships now that he's at the Olympics, especially because he just helped the USA win gold in the team event with his partner, Ellie Cam.

9:01But he said most Olympic figure skaters are not doing this for the financial reward. The reward is internal and in how we're able to share what we love, a sport that we love, an art that we love with so many people and maybe inspire others to go after their dreams as well. Well, Lillian, you had those dreams maybe once upon a time right before you turned to more practical pursuits. Yes, now I skate in a mall and it costs$4 an hour. But I won't be in the Olympics anytime soon. But you can get yourself a Wetzel's pretzel after you practice. It's true. It's Auntie Anne's, actually. Okay.