<p>For U.S. Olympians, Paralympians and hopefuls taking advantage of an official program that offers jobs with flexible work hours so athletes can train, Home Depot is the only game in town.</p><p>The Atlanta-based home improvement giant is the only employer offering athletes work under the Olympic Job Opportunities Program. The U.S. Olympic Committee is trying to lure other companies into the program, but Home Depot enjoys "certain exclusivity" to the marketing of the program, said Jim Grice, the USOC's chief marketing officer.</p><p>Since 1977, more than 500 companies have participated in the program by offering jobs that allow athletes to earn an income and benefits while maintaining their rigorous training routines.</p><p>However, since 2000, no company has participated except Home Depot, which offers about 176 athletes flexible 20-hour-a-week schedules for full-time pay and benefits. Most of the athletes are U.S. Olympic team members or hopefuls, and 28 are Canadian or Puerto Rican.</p><p>You must be an Olympic sponsor to participate in the jobs program, but many corporations have taken different approaches to their Olympic sponsorship, Grice said, like former job-program participants Allstate and Anheuser-Busch, which each have numerous programs supporting the Olympics.</p><p>Anheuser-Busch, which quit participating because Olympic endorsements and stipends lessen the need for corporate jobs, offers sponsorships to amateur athletes and contributes funds to training centers. Allstate holds Olympics-based basketball clinics and presented the induction ceremony for the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame this year.</p><p>Other former job-program participants, like J.C. Penney and Qwest Communications, are no longer Olympic sponsors, Grice said. Qwest spokesman Bob Toevs said Olympic sponsorship no longer fit Qwest's marketing strategy.</p><p>Mike Mena, who will not compete in Athens but has wrestled in two Olympic trials, landed his first job with the program in 1999 at J.C. Penney in Iowa City, Iowa. When that company opted not to renew its Olympic sponsorship, he was unemployed for about six months before moving to Bloomington, Ind.</p><p>Now, he drives about an hour to Indianapolis to work in the hardware department of Home Depot, where he has been employed since 2001. Despite the long commute, he said the job still provides him plenty of time to train up to 42 hours a week at Indiana University, where he also is an assistant wrestling coach.</p><p>"That program is an awesome program. It'll help you attain your goals and become the best in the world, for sure," Mena said.</p><p>Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler Dennis Hall said his national ranking dropped before he joined the Home Depot flooring department in Plover, Wis., and Olympic kayaker Jeff Smoke said Athens _ not Beijing in 2008 _ would probably be his last Olympics without his job in the Home Depot hardware department in Chula Vista, Calif.</p><p>Olympic weightlifter Tara Cunningham said she just learned to live without money before joining the Home Depot paint department in Mt. Pleasant, Mich.</p><p>"The biggest change is you have money. You're not stressing about how you're going to make your car payment, or put gas in your car, or how you're going to get to the next competition," Cunningham said.</p><p>While Home Depot's Olympians seem pleased with their jobs, all said they had to wait for months to get into the program, a circumstance one Olympian said probably wouldn't exist if more companies were involved.</p><p>John Costello, Home Depot's executive vice president of marketing, said he suspects other companies don't participate because they aren't open seven days a week and can't offer the same schedule flexibility as the home-improvement giant.</p><p>It's not that other companies don't have jobs programs; they're just not involved in the official Olympic jobs program. The U.S. Army has the World-Class Athlete Program, which provides resources to soldiers capable of competing in the Olympics, and 24-Hour Fitness has the Commitment to Elite Olympic Hopefuls program.</p><p>The 24-Hour Fitness program offers an amiable pay scale for fewer than 40 hours of work to eight athletes, but spokeswoman Kerry Slatkoff was careful not compare the program to OJOP.</p><p>"Simply because we're not allowed to call it the OJOP program," she said. "Because of contractual agreements Home Depot and USOC made together, it's not allowed to be called the same thing."</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>Home Depot: www.homedepot.com/HDUS/EN_US/corporate/corp_respon/olympic_job_prog.shtml</p><p>USOC: www.usoc.org</p>
