(FORTUNE Magazine) – ON A RECENT FLIGHT to Denver from Grand Junction, Colorado, a business executive asked Terry Liskevych, coach of the U.S. women's Olympic volleyball team, why the United States doesn't win more medals in the games. ''Do you have your checkbook with you?'' Liskevych asked. The man nodded. ''Then, get it out, because we need more money.'' Corporate America is already the biggest check writer to the U.S. Olympic Committee, the primary channel for financing the teams. The organization had a record $150 million available for the four years culminating in the 1988 games. Yet despite heavy support from the champions of capitalism, the red, white, and blue flopped miserably. U.S. Olympians snared only 13% of all medals at last summer's games in Seoul; two decades ago, when support from all sources was far smaller, they walked off with 20%. Last year's Winter Games at Calgary were an out-and-out disaster. The Yanks won only 4% of the medals, vs. 11% eight years ago. A team from Taiwan, no heavyweight in winter sports, beat U.S. bobsledders. Why is business spending more money and mining less gold? The sad truth is that little of the corporate cash trickles down to where it is needed most: helping the athletes who compete on the rinks and cinder tracks to subsist while they go through years of arduous training and elimination matches. George Steinbrenner, the Yankee baseball team owner who presided over a recent study at the U.S. Olympic Committee's request, says 85% to 90% of the American athletes are ''struggling.'' Yet they are up against the state-financed teams of the Soviet Union, East Germany, and other socialist bloc countries that have turned their Olympic programs into some of the most successful nationalized industries since Marx wrote Das Kapital. In today's world of sports, where superhuman is routine, athletes can't compete if they can't eat. It is not too early to worry about an Olympiad that is three years and a continent away. ''This is the time when decisions are made,'' says Sheryl Abbot, manager of the U.S. Olympic Committee's program to place athletes in jobs. ''Either the athlete decides to go for it another four years or hang it up.'' It is also when companies decide how to contribute to the U.S. effort in 1992. Corporate America kicked in an estimated $125 million to Olympic bodies over the four years that included the 1988 games, not counting the two TV networks' payments for broadcast rights. The biggest chunk came from six sponsors -- 3M, Coca-Cola, Eastman Kodak, Federal Express, Visa, and Time Inc., publisher of FORTUNE -- which contributed more than $80 million to an international fund- raising campaign called The Olympic Programme, or TOP. Foreign companies put up a smaller sum. The sponsors got exclusive use of the linked-ring Olympic logo for promotional purposes in all 156 countries that participate in TOP. Allen Jacobson, 3M's chief executive, says the use of the rings is well worth the cost: ''The Olympics have an image similar to what we like to project, which is competitive excellence.'' SADLY for the American competitors, the U.S. companies' contributions went mostly to the host countries and foreign teams. Gary Hite, vice president of sports marketing at Coca-Cola, says that doesn't bother him. Worldwide exposure is a primary reason for giving through TOP, he says. ''We do business in 160 countries, and with TOP we reach essentially all of them.'' Nevertheless, the bottom line on TOP is that whereas U.S. companies contributed about two-thirds of the money, a mere 13%, or $16 million, went to the U.S. Olympic Committee. The committee raised another $47 million directly from 50 American corporations. In return for the right to use the Olympic rings in the U.S. only, such FORTUNE 500 sponsors as Xerox, McDonald's, and General Motors contributed from $500,000 to $10 million each. Many companies also donated supplies: bandages from Johnson & Johnson, computer systems from Data General. In addition, the committee picked up $15 million, or 2.5%, of the $609 million in TV rights paid by ABC and NBC. Other sources -- public fund-raising drives, for example, as well as the sale of Olympic coins and checkoffs on several state tax forms -- furnished the rest of the committee's income. The committee, headquartered at a converted Air Force base in Colorado Springs, has won no medals for efficiency. Fund-raising expenses, publicity, overhead, and salaries for its staff of 300 ate up nearly a third of its budget over the past four years. Much of the rest went to the 46 national governing bodies in charge of each team for such items as coaching, travel expenses, training facilities, and grass-roots programs to foster tryouts for the games. A mere $2.2 million, or 1.5% of the committee's budget, went into athletes' pockets through direct support. That was the equivalent of $60 a month over four years for each of the 742 athletes who went to Calgary and Seoul. Corporations gave at least $20 million of additional money to the teams' national governing bodies, but in most cases little of it went directly to the players. EVEN FOR SOME STARS, the Olympics represent an enormous financial drain. Brian Boitano, 25, the figure skater who won one of America's two gold medals at Calgary, winces when asked about the cost. ''Parents can spend $30,000 annually on training for years,'' he says, ''and that's with no guarantees. Ice time alone can run up to $200 a day.'' Adds Robert Trenary, a well-to-do Chicago steel executive and father of national figure skating champ Jill Trenary: ''It's barbaric what you're asked to sacrifice to make the team.'' Figure skating at least is a glamour sport, offering riches to winners who later go professional. No bonanza beckons those who strive, say, in archery, field hockey, or the ski biathlon. Patty Shea, 26, a member of the current U.S. women's field hockey team, lives with her parents in Belmont, Massachusetts, to save money. ''You constantly have to beg and scrape,'' she says. ''You can't hold full-time work and train -- and the bills are mounting up while you're away representing the United States.'' Just getting the air fare can be a problem. When U.S. fencers competed in the 1987 world championships at Bern, Switzerland, their national governing body had only $23,000 for the $75,000 in travel expenses. The rest came from the athletes and their families. Fencing is not the only money-starved team. Raymond Scott, executive director of the U.S. Badminton Association, serves gratis because the national governing body can't pay him a salary. Speed skating had no headquarters office until early this year. In spite of this, Bonnie Blair -- who used to sneak into ice rinks to train -- took the only other U.S. gold at Calgary. The financial outlook for the Americans is not quite as austere for 1992. The Steinbrenner study declared that the U.S. Olympic Committee's ''primary goal'' should be winning medals. ''Making the Olympic team just to be there isn't enough,'' says the Yankee boss. ''You might as well be in the church choir.'' Even before the study commission issued its findings in February, the U.S. Olympic Committee had decided to raise its budget to $249 million over the next four years. This time it has negotiated a 20% cut from a more ambitious international TOP campaign for corporate sponsors, or at least $28 million. It has also wangled a much bigger slice of the television rights: 10%, or $64 million. The committee has raised its goal -- to $120 million -- for direct gifts from corporate sponsors. And it is streamlining its bureaucracy to free up more millions. Baaron Pittenger, the committee's executive director, promises that greater sums will reach those vying for medals. In the past, he says, training facilities and sports medicine seemed more critical: ''Now there is a general consensus that athletes need more help.'' For 1992, the committee will spend 9%, or $22 million, of its budget on direct assistance to the competitors. But the amounts contemplated still look chintzy. ''It's about half of what's needed,'' declares Dr. Ralph Hale, a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee's executive board. IF THE TEAMS are to get what they truly require, Americans will have to abandon any remaining illusions that the games are purely for amateurs. In the past, says Wil McClure, a psychologist and management consultant who in 1960 won a gold medal for boxing, ''Olympians were supposed to be rosy-cheeked kids who played sports for their own fun.'' Now the games are a kind of halfway house. The word ''amateur'' was dropped from the official charter in 1981. Some professional athletes, such as tennis ace Chris Evert, competed at Seoul even though they stood to win no prize money. U.S. Olympic officials now believe that all athletes with a serious chance of making a team should be guaranteed minimal assistance in the form of stipends. This plus better staff support and greatly improved training facilities will take lots of money. The Steinbrenner commission has already called the U.S. Olympic Committee's 1992 budget inadequate. A public opinion poll sponsored by the committee last fall revealed that 90% of Americans favor government aid for the country's teams, and 60% specifically endorse taxpayer support. If Congress were to approve a checkoff box on federal income tax returns this year, a committee official estimates, $100 million more could be raised for 1992. BUT WITH the federal budget deficit staring legislators in the face, that may not happen, and in any case business will continue to be the main financial pillar. Companies might well consider giving more money directly to individual teams. ''Corporations are going to have to move in this direction,'' says Boitano, ''if we are to have a hope of staying competitive.'' Campbell Soup has backed the U.S. Figure Skating Association, which uses the money mainly to pay such costs as travel and coaching. In return, one team member makes unpaid appearances to promote soup in commercials and on tours. ''Skating is a natural environment for soup,'' says Jay Wissink, Campbell's director of marketing. It appeals heavily to women, the principal soup buyers. Direct support to teams also gets results. Nearly all national governing bodies with corporate backing won medals in Seoul. Track and field, which gets $2 million annually from such sponsors as Mobil and Quaker Oats, took 25 medals. Nynex and 3M backed the luge team at Calgary, and Bonny Warner came in sixth in the women's competition, the country's best performance ever. Business could also help by giving more jobs to Olympians. The average age of the American team at Seoul was 26. ''Athletes begin to feel the pressures of the social clock,'' says Sheryl Abbot of the Olympic committee's job- placement program, who quit competitive figure skating at 18. ''Everyone starts to ask, 'When are you going to get a real job?' '' Through the committee's Olympic Job Opportunities Program, employers put athletes in jobs with flexible hours. But corporate participation has been spotty. During the last Olympiad, 122 companies employed 152 athletes, 51 of whom actually made the teams. Abbot's program has placed only eight of the 116 athletes who have applied for jobs since last October. A close look at one team's finances dispels all doubts that money makes a difference. In 1976 the American men's and women's volleyball teams didn't even qualify for the Olympics. After the players all moved to the San Diego area, where they practice together in one location, the men's team won two golds. VOLLEYBALL is an example of the best use of the dollar,'' says Kenneth Clarke, assistant executive director of the U.S. Olympic Committee. ''They don't have the most, but they use well what they do have.'' The U.S. Volleyball Association has a budget of about $3 million a year, substantially above the average, and $400,000 comes from five corporate sponsors from the U.S. and abroad: PepsiCo's Kentucky Fried Chicken, Coor's light beer, Continental and Eastern Air Lines, Sports Imports, and Japanese sportswear maker Mizuno Corp. More than a fifth of the money goes directly to the athletes for pay and expenses. The leading women players receive stipends of nearly $30,000 a year. The four stars of the men's team, all in their middle 20s and early 30s, do far better -- too well, some might say. Karch Kiraly, Steve Timmons, Bob Ctvrtlik, and Jeff Stork together receive stipends of about $225,000. Kiraly, the captain, hopes to make $300,000 this year, counting product endorsements. No rosy-cheeked amateur he. Stopping short of pure professionalism, the international volleyball federation's rules require Kiraly and the others to place their checks from product endorsements and team-related speaking engagements in a trust fund. But Kiraly, who calls the trust fund ''shamateurism,'' can withdraw whatever he needs for living and training. Few would quarrel with the volleyball association's system of supporting all its other players. Kiraly recalls that when he started with the team in 1981, he got $3 a day for expenses, period. ''Steve Timmons and I lived out of our cars and slept on the floors of friends who would keep us.'' Today even rookies get $9,000 a year in stipends and are eligible for the team's job- placement program. In 1986 Ctvrtlik, an aspiring real estate developer, joined Coldwell Banker at $12,000 a year. ''I couldn't have made it to the Olympics without Coldwell Banker,'' he says. He quit last year to do speeches and endorsements. The team is hardly rolling in money even now. Corporate sponsorship has lately dropped off. The men's team is short an assistant coach, and the two teams share a full-time trainer. The public gym that the teams use is like one in a shabby inner-city high school. The wooden floor is scarred, and naked bulbs provide the illumination of twilight, even at noon on a sunny day. The sexes are divided onto separate courts by a large green see-through net, and the place smells of stale gym clothes. Lockers are unavailable, and the showers uninviting. Players come in uniform and leave sweaty. Yet spirit is high, the athletes have few economic worries, and the team considers itself worthy of emulation. Jeff Stork says he wrote Steinbrenner and told him to ''come check us out. When everyone learns what we're doing, they'll follow.'' Volleyball may not be perfect. But if the United States wants to win more medals, more teams need a similar system.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: SOURCE: UNITED STATES OLYMPIC COMMITTEE CAPTION: MORE MONEY, FEWER MEDALS While the U.S. Olympic Committee's budget swelled, the Yanks slid. Not charted: boycott-skewed 1980 and 1984.