Nathan Crumpton was hooked from the moment he first cast his eyes on skeleton racing. 

"I saw it on TV at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and I just thought it looks like the coolest sport in the world, and I knew I had to give it a try," Crumpton told DW. "And lo and behold, 12 years later, here I am at the Olympic Games, competing in my own skeleton race."  

Representing American Samoa in Olympic skeleton for the first and last time, Crumpton – who ran for the island territory in the 100 meters at last year's Tokyo Games – called his 19th-place finish in Beijing "vindicating" because it was the culmination of a journey that had been peppered with hardship.  

He previously competed in skeleton for the United States, where he mostly resides, until a selection dispute forced him off the team. That had followed a painful qualification process for the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, with a back injury scuppering his chances of making it to South Korea.  

And so, for the past four years, Crumpton has found refuge with the American Samoa team courtesy of his Polynesian roots. His biggest problem, however, has been getting together the money to keep up with his rivals from bigger and better-funded countries.  

"Every year is a battle," the 36-year-old said. "Every year is a financial struggle to make it happen, and I have to carefully construct my budget before each year to be able to make this Olympic journey possible.  

"It is a hand-to-mouth lifestyle in the sport of skeleton. We're sitting in relative obscurity for three years and 11 months out of the Olympic cycle. And then for one month every four years, there's this intense interest in it. It's difficult to get through the rest of the time."  

Sharing the money  

Those difficulties are one of the reasons why Crumpton unsuccessfully stood for election to the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) athletes' commission, which represents the interests of athletes in Olympic matters. He is advocating for a change in the way that the IOC distributes its revenue.  

"The idea would be if the athletes actually qualify for the Olympic Games and participate in those Games, to then have some of the revenues sent directly to them," Crumpton said.  

Currently, the IOC channels its vast pool of broadcasting and marketing money to national Olympic committees and sports federations through its Olympic solidarity fund. That money is then passed on to the athletes in their home countries as grants.  

Although they can supplement their income with sponsorship deals and other sources of funding, many athletes like Crumpton struggle to cover their training and travel costs. He says a lot of those he canvassed responded favorably to his idea, which would effectively see Olympians unionize.  

"It's definitely fair to say that there are a lot of athletes who would like to be supported," Crumpton said. "A lot of these athletes are in different sports where they may not make an actual living from their efforts, even though they have qualified for the Olympics.  

"They say that it's too inefficient and that the bureaucracy doesn't necessarily work. It would just be much simpler and much easier to have the funding go directly towards the athletes themselves."  

'A mere 4.1%' for the athletes  

A 2020 study by Global Athlete, an athlete-led movement, looked into Olympics-related commercial activity for the 2013-2016 cycle and found that of the approximately $1.4 billion (€1.2 billion) flowing into the IOC's coffers annually, only a small proportion trickled down to the athletes themselves.

"The IOC has spent a mere 4.1% on athletes," the study concluded.  

At the time, the IOC disputed that figure, saying it was "just plain wrong" and that it redistributes 90% of its income "to assist athletes and develop sport worldwide." It added that "every day the IOC distributes about $3.4 million around the world to help athletes and sporting organizations."

Global Athlete likened the amount of revenue generated by the IOC, a non-profit organization, to that of major sports leagues such as the NFL and NHL, which negotiate contracts with players through collective bargaining. Noting that these professional leagues return about half of their revenue to the players, the movement called on the IOC to adopt a similar system for Olympians.  

The IOC's current model harks back to the ancient Greek Olympics, Crumpton said, when competitors refused to be paid for their participation. While some taking part in Beijing think it is important to maintain this tradition, others consider that Olympic athletes should no longer be treated as amateurs, given many of them are now professionals.  

"At some point, the Games have to change with the times," Crumpton said.  

In a response to a query, the IOC didn't comment on Crumpton's proposals. Instead, it referred DW to a 2019 speech by its president, Thomas Bach, in which he acknowledged that "we did not always do our best to make the solidarity model transparent and understandable enough to the athletes and the wider public."  

Bach added that the IOC was going to work on a set of measures "to create more opportunities within the framework of the solidarity model," but didn't specify what these were.  

Jack-of-all-trades  

Crumpton persevered with skeleton racing for as long as he did thanks to support from those around him. At these Olympics, he partnered with the British team, which helped him film his training runs and transport his sled.  

"I'm really good friends with all of the GB athletes," he said. "They're a great group of people, so I'm happy that they symbolically adopted me for the Winter Olympics, and it was overall a wonderful partnership."

Sport, however, is just one of Crumpton's talents, with photography, modelling and writing among the other strings to his bow. He has recently penned a nonfiction novel called "Alpha Status," which he describes as a cross between The Economist and "50 Shades of Grey."   

Having lost the election, the man who is happy to be known as a jack-of-all-trades is now ready to leave his skeleton dreams and difficulties behind.  

"Hopefully I can transition into the next stage of my life as a novelist," he said. "I would like to write more stories. It was a grind, but so is sport, so that wasn't too foreign to me. If I can make a career out of it, I think that would be a suitable next step for me."

Edited by Chuck Penfold.