To go for the gold, these Olympians went into the red

The 27-year-old’s $2,000 monthly stipend from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee isn’t enough to cover living expenses in Los Angeles, where she trains 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., six days a week.

She has sustained her decadelong Olympic career by performing routines for weddings and music videos, coaching youth teams and working at a Dick’s Sporting Goods store. She said she made about $10,000 doing underwater stunts in the 2022 movie “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever."

“There are definitely times when I’m feeling that pressure, which isn’t great while you’re training at the highest level," Alvarez said. The financial strain is worth it, she said, when her goal is to make it to the Olympics.

Team USA’s millionaire basketball players and endorsement magnets like gymnast Simone Biles are the outliers. To get to the pinnacle of their sport, Olympians make financial sacrifices, put careers on hold and cobble together a living around their training schedules. Some accumulate thousands in debt.

A report commissioned by Congress and released in March identified significant financial barriers for Olympic hopefuls. In a survey of about 1,000 American athletes in the Olympic and Paralympic pipelines, 26.5% reported individual incomes under $15,000 a year.

“Some of the most talented competitors under our flag go to sleep at night under the roof of a car or without sufficient food or adequate health insurance," the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics wrote.

Cautionary tale

Rulon Gardner’s “miracle on the mat" victory in a gold-medal Greco-Roman wrestling match in 2000 made him an Olympic legend. He’s a fixture of TV montages during the Games and signed autographs at a celebration of Salt Lake City’s successful bid to host the 2034 Olympics last week.

To fellow athletes, he’s a cautionary tale. He took on $70,000 of debt while training and didn’t plan for his financial future after sports.

“I put so many travel and training expenses on credit cards," Gardner said. “You’re not thinking about it at the time, but you’re throwing all your eggs in one basket."

His gold medal came with a $30,000 prize and earnings from speaking engagements and sponsorships, enough to clear his debts. But Gardner, who wrestled at 286 pounds, said he had been a flyweight in the financial-literacy department. He lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on bad real-estate investments and a failed gym venture, and filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

The 52-year-old, who lives in Utah, has coached high-school wrestling and driven forklifts. Today, he sells insurance and real estate and said he’s financially stable.

“People recognize me as an Olympian, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I want to be your insurance agent,’" he said.

Medal math

This year’s report on elite American athletes found they were, on average, poorer for having competed, paying a net cost of about $12,000 a year after accounting for travel, entry fees and other expenses.

“One of the things that a lot of athletes are really good at is compartmentalizing, and that can be really helpful when you have to perform as an athlete while also dealing with financial struggles," said Han Xiao, a co-chair of the commission.

Xiao played on the American table tennis team from 2004 to 2008. He and his parents paid for most of his coaching and competition costs. He retired from international play after college, partly because he didn’t see a financial future in it. He now works as a software engineer.

It pays to win. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, or USOPC, awards $37,500 for a gold medal, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for bronze.

The USOPC and individual sports’ national governing bodies also offer athletes stipends and health insurance. Often, though, only top-ranked athletes are eligible for assistance. Many pay training and competition expenses out of pocket. The USOPC awards almost $2.5 million in annual funding for costs such as education, training and travel.

Michelle Atherley, who competes in the seven-event heptathlon, has been training six days a week for the past three years. She often pays for expenses like gear, travel and medical specialists, and has accumulated about $12,000 in credit-card debt.

On the high jump, she was 3 centimeters short of a trip to the Paris Olympics.

Atherley said the winnings from “one good meet" could wipe out a large portion of her debt. “It sounds like I’m gambling my life away, but that is kind of how it works," she said.

The 28-year-old said she remains committed to her sport. She is on track to make $20,000 this year from prize winnings and coaching high-school track, walking dogs and babysitting.

Some 71% of Olympians, Paralympians and hopefuls reported having a paid job outside of sports in a 2024 survey by Global Athlete, an advocacy group focused on athletes’ welfare.

Funding the dream

Paralympic table tennis champion Ian Seidenfeld, 23 years old, works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. as an ETF specialist in Allianz’s Minneapolis office. Then it’s time for cardio and table tennis practice until 10 p.m.

Seidenfeld, the reigning gold medalist, has financial support—about $20,000 a year from the USOPC and USA Table Tennis combined. His salary at Allianz, an Olympic sponsor, is about $80,000. The financial-services company also gave him paid leave to compete in Paris.

A finance major while at the University of Minnesota, he said he never considered delaying his career to train full-time. Plus, his mom encouraged him to get a job.

“I want to build a brighter future for my finances with sounder investments than betting on my body," Seidenfeld said.

Gold-medalist sprinter Lauryn Williams, who became a financial planner after retiring from competition, has worked with dozens of Team USA athletes. She said about 20% of those clients took on debt.

Crowdfunding is popular as well. In the past two years, aspiring Olympians raised more than $2 million on the platform GoFundMe. About $300,000 of the funds went to U.S. Olympians.

The aftermath

Dan Walsh won a bronze medal in 2008 as a member of the U.S. eight-man rowing team. While training, he worked in the Home Depot lawn-and-garden department and late nights as a hotel security guard. It wasn’t enough to cover expenses like rent, medical bills and groceries to fuel his 10,000-calorie diet.

He trained with the national team leading up to the 2012 Olympics but didn’t make the final roster.

“I left the national team sleeping on a leaky air mattress and tens of thousands of dollars in credit-card debt," he said.

Walsh, now a sales manager for the Connecticut office of Hudson Boat Works, said he’s rooting for Team USA’s rowers in Paris. He has his own reason to celebrate this summer. More than a decade after his athletic career ended, he finished paying down his $60,000 debt in June.

Write to Joe Pinsker at joe.pinsker@wsj.com and Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com