Many Olympians juggle elite training with full-time careers to make the finances work.
From lab techs to firefighters, these athletes built surprising parallel professions.
Some are already preparing for life after sport, earning advanced degrees while chasing medals.
To the world, the Olympics may look like a full-time job, but for many athletes, it's a second one.
"I have two full-time jobs," Team USA curler Korey Dropkin told KARE 11, a local Minnesota television station. "One is curling … my other job is a realtor."
Meanwhile, his mixed doubles partner, Cory Thiesse, works at a wastewater company for a steady paycheck that allows her to compete.
Their experience is common among Olympians. The International Olympic Committee does not pay athletes directly for competing or winning medals. Instead, the IOC redistributes 90% of its income — about $4.2 million per day — to National Olympic Committees and international federations, according to the organization. Those bodies then decide how to support athletes in their countries.
In the US, that includes medal bonuses — currently $37,500 for gold, $22,500 for silver, and $15,000 for bronze — but athletes receive those amounts only if they reach the podium. For sports like curling, biathlon, and skeleton, where sponsorships and broadcast revenue are limited, that often isn't enough to fund a career.
Artistic swimmer Anita Alvarez told Business Insider last year she once supplemented a $250 monthly Team USA stipend with shifts at a sporting goods store. Even after that stipend rose to $1,900 a month, she said it was "stressful" trying to stay "focused and dialed in on the Olympic training" while rushing to work after long days in the pool.
Support models vary widely from country to country. In Italy, where the Winter Olympics are being held, many top athletes are formally employed by military and police sports groups, effectively placing Olympians on the government payroll. In the UK, athletes receive National Lottery-funded performance awards designed to help cover living and training costs.
Team USA is also experimenting with new financial backstops. A recently announced donation by financier Ross Stevens will provide American Olympians with $200,000 in total benefits to help reduce long-term financial insecurity. But the payout comes after the Games, not during the years when athletes pay for travel, coaching, equipment, and time away from work.
Until the financial model changes, many Olympic careers will continue to be built around a stable paycheck.
Here are 15 athletes whose day jobs help fund their time on the world stage.
2026 silver-medalist Ryan Cochran-Siegle works at his family's maple syrup shop in Vermont.
Ryan Cochran-Siegle works at his family's maple syrup shack.
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It's perhaps unsurprising that Cochran-Siegle started skiing when he was just 2: His mother, Barbara Ann Cochran, was also an Olympian, winning gold in slalom at the 1972 Games in Sapporo, Japan.
A three-time Olympian, Cochran-Siegle, 33, won silver in the super-G on Wednesday. He also earned a silver medal for the same event at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
During his off-season, he works at his cousins' maple syrup farm, Cochran's Slopeside Syrup, in Richmond, Vermont, a gig he's had since he was 18.
"Depending on the time of year it typically involves either boiling maple syrup or pulling taps from trees once the sap run has finished," he told NBC in 2022. "For me it's less of a job and more of a way to come home and help out with my cousin's family business. It's also a great way to be productive while spending time outside in the woods with family, exploring our Cochran family land."
He's also a part-time engineering student at the University of Vermont, The Athletic reported.
Before competing in Milan, US curler Korey Dropkin was closing real estate deals.
Korey Dropkin worked in real estate.
Mattia Ozbot/Getty Images
Curling doesn't offer guaranteed contracts or league salaries, so athletes often build parallel careers during the four-year Olympic cycle.
In the years leading up to the Milano Cortina Winter Games — where he won a silver medal in the mixed doubles curling final on Tuesday — Korey Dropkin split his time between curling competitions and the housing market.
He began curling at age 5 at Broomstones Curling Club in Massachusetts and later moved to Duluth to train. A graduate of the University of Minnesota Duluth, Dropkin, now 30, became a licensed realtor, working across northern Minnesota and Wisconsin while competing internationally.
His mixed doubles curling partner, Cory Thiesse, is a wastewater chemical tester.
Cory Thiesse is a lab technician.
Mattia Ozbot/Getty Images
Cory Thiesse, a Minnesota-based curler who earned silver with Dropkin in mixed doubles curling on Tuesday, works full-time in wastewater testing at an environmental lab. Thiesse's role involves testing water for mercury levels.
Her mother, a former competitive curler herself, is her boss at the lab.
"That really is helpful for getting time off to go compete, and I just feel really grateful to have a job that pays the bills while I'm able to go and compete in curling," Thiesse, 31, told KARE11.
US ski jumper Paige Jones is pursuing a biomedical engineering degree.
Paige Jones is a student.
Alex Pantling/Getty Images
Paige Jones' Olympic schedule ran alongside online coursework in biomedical engineering at the University of North Dakota. At the end of the degree, she hopes to pursue dentistry.
"I always think of school as balance to my life as an athlete," she told UND's website. "It gives me something to think about when I'm not on the hill. I don't want to be ruminating about ski jumping all the time — it's so easy to get in your head, especially when the jump only lasts about five seconds."
Born and raised in Park City, Utah, Jones started downhill skiing at age 3 before discovering ski jumping at 9 through a school program. She progressed to international competitions as a teenager.
Her breakthrough came at the 2021 FIS Nordic World Championships, where she became the first woman to jump an Olympic large hill at a world championships event, per Team USA.
After missing the Beijing Olympics due to an injury, Jones, now 23, rebuilt her form and earned a spot on Team USA for the 2026 Games.
US boxer Morelle McCane worked as a birthday-party clown to fund her Olympic run.
Morelle McCane worked as a clown and a daycare worker to fund her Olympic dreams.
Dustin Satloff/Getty Images for the USOPC
Cleveland-born boxer Morelle McCane, 31, started boxing at 17, then pieced together a rotation of quick jobs while working toward the Paris Olympics.
The Houston Chronicle reported that her odd-job list included working as a daycare supervisor, a mailroom worker, and even dressing up as a children's birthday-party clown.
"You just have to find what you can for the moment sometimes," McCane told the Chronicle in 2024, explaining that better-paying employers typically want longer commitments than an Olympic schedule allows.
Olympic curler Tara Peterson is a dentist.
Tara Peterson competing in 2022.
David Ramos/Getty Images
Peterson, 34, graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry in 2018 and now works as a dentist in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.
She started curling at the age of 8 when her parents — themselves a dentist and a dental hygienist — signed up for a curling league and enrolled their daughters in a junior league, per her Team USA bio.
The sisters made their Olympic debuts at the Beijing Games in 2022.
Her sister, Tabitha Peterson, works as a pharmacist while captaining Team USA's curling program.
Tabitha Peterson, pictured at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games,
Justin Setterfield/Getty Images
Tabitha Peterson, 36, a Minneapolis-born curler and multi-time Olympian, has built her sports career alongside a clinical one. She studied at the Minnesota College of Pharmacy and shuffled between being a curler and a pharmacist.
"I've gotta get some hours in and get a paycheck," Peterson told KARE 11 in a recent interview, adding that there are many similarities between curling and pharmacy in that both require "intense focus and attention to detail."
Olympic alpine skier Keely Cashman pulled barista shifts in a small town.
Keely Cashman competes in the Milan Winter Olympics.
Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images
Keely Cashman's Olympic journey included coffee orders and espresso machines: The skier, 26, worked as a barista at her family's coffee shop in Strawberry, a small town of around 80 people in California.
"I try to be someone who can show the kids that you don't have to come from a fancy academy to make it to the Olympics," she told KETV.
Alpine skiing can offer endorsement upside for some athletes, but outside the podium tier, income can fluctuate season to season.
For Cashman, the coffee shop provided steady work between competitions and injuries.
Team USA skeleton racer Austin Florian works as an aerospace engineer.
Skeleton racer Austin Florian works as an engineer by day.
Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
Austin Florian, 31, didn't grow up sliding headfirst down icy tracks. He was a ski racer in Southington, Connecticut, before discovering skeleton while attending Clarkson University in Upstate New York.
Florian graduated from Clarkson with an engineering degree and later worked in manufacturing engineering in Connecticut while pursuing national team status.
By the time he qualified for the 2026 Games, Florian had turned into an elite starter, and he'd done it while holding down engineering work.
Olympic moguls skier Bradley Wilson sold paintings to help finance his ski career.
Bradley Wilson competed at the Olympics in 2014, 2018, and 2022.
Tom Pennington/Getty Images
The Montana native, 33, competed in the Olympics in 2014, 2018, and 2022.
"Like most sports, skiing has an offseason and I had to stay productive," he wrote on his website. "So during the summer in Park City I started to play around with painting and, like my ski career, the art started to progress and began to take off."
In 2022, Business Insider reported that Wilson was selling pieces for roughly $100 to several hundred dollars.
He added, "It has been a huge help to pay for my expenses in my ski career."
US curler Chris Plys took over his late father's food brokerage company during his Olympic career.
Chris Plys, pictured at the 2022 Olympics, took over the family business.
Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP via Getty Images
Chris Plys' Olympic timeline is punctuated by responsibility.
After serving as an alternate at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, Plys returned to the Olympic stage in Beijing in 2022. In between, life intervened. His father died of cancer in 2012, and Plys left college to take over the family's food brokerage business.
"It was the first major thing that I had gone through after the Olympics, and I just was forced to grow up fast," Plys told USA Today in 2022.
The Duluth native, 38, balanced running the company with elite curling competition.
Kimi Goetz worked at a finance company while building her speedskating résumé.
Kimi Goetz at the 2022 Olympics.
Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
The New Jersey native — who didn't take up long-track speedskating seriously until her late teens — balanced international competition with a part-time role as a processor at a finance company.
It paid off. Goetz, now 31, made her Olympic debut at Beijing 2022, finishing seventh in the 1,000 meters and competing in the 500. She followed that with back-to-back World Championship medals and six World Cup victories in the seasons after Beijing.
In 2019, she also self-published a cookbook, "Mindful Meals," which chronicles her move to Salt Lake City and her learning to cook while training at an elite level.
Olympic silver medalist Lea Ann Parsley was also Ohio's Firefighter of the Year.
Lea Ann Parsley was a volunteer firefighter.
Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Long before women's skeleton made its Olympic debut, Lea Ann Parsley was responding to emergency calls in Ohio.
Parsley became a professional firefighter in the mid-1990s and was named the state's Firefighter of the Year in 1999 after helping rescue a mother and daughter from a burning home. Around the same time, she was quietly making history in a different arena — she became the first American skeleton athlete to win a World Cup medal.
She joined the US Skeleton Team in 1998 and quickly rose through the ranks, eventually earning seven World Cup medals. In 2002, she won silver at the Salt Lake City Olympics in the first-ever Olympic women's skeleton race.
Her silver medal remains one of the biggest achievements in American women's sliding sports.
After retiring from competition, she earned a nursing degree and built a career in healthcare and emergency response.
US biathlete Susan Dunklee worked in environmental science while competing internationally.
Biathlete Susan Dunklee, pictured at the 2022 Beijing Olympics
Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Vermont native Susan Dunklee built one of the most successful American biathlon careers of her generation while studying and working in environmental science.
As a member of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project in Vermont, she promoted sustainability, alongside endurance sports, in her community.
"I'm involved with a lot of the environmental work, helping out in the gardens, monitoring the water quality in the local lake, and teaching local kids about living a sustainable lifestyle," she told EcoAthletes.
She retired from competition after the 2022 Beijing Olympics and started a new chapter as the running director for the Craftsbury Outdoor Center. She has also helped coach other biathlon athletes.
A three-time Olympian and silver medalist at the Biathlon World Championships, Dunklee has spoken about the financial realities of competing in biathlon, one of the least commercialized winter sports in the US.
US snowboardcross rider Alex Deibold went from wax technician to Olympic bronze medalist.
Alex Deibold won a bronze medal at the 2014 Olympics.
ANDREJ ISAKOVIC / AFP via Getty Images
Before Alex Deibold stood on an Olympic podium, he was helping other riders get there.
In 2014, ESPN reported that Deibold attended the 2010 Vancouver Games as a technician for the US snowboardcross team: waxing, tuning, and preparing boards for competition. Four years later, he returned to the Olympics not as a staff member but as an athlete.
The turnaround was dramatic. Deibold won bronze in snowboardcross at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, completing one of the more unlikely arcs of that Olympic cycle.