VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Caitlin Compton won the 5-kilometer-freestyle title at the U.S. Cross Country Championships last year in Anchorage, Alaska, then flew home to Minneapolis.

The next day she was back at work. Cleaning toilets.

“I’m not too proud to admit it,” she says.

To get a break on rent, Compton cut a deal with her apartment complex to serve as a “caretaker,” which is a fancy way of saying she cleaned apartments — living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms — once tenants had moved out, or put trash back in the Dumpsters whenever dogs got into them. When the caretaker deal ended, Compton and her boyfriend had to move because they couldn’t afford the full rent.

It was the eighth time in four years she packed up.

“It’s one of those things: If I want to be an Olympic athlete, this is what I have to do,” says Compton, 29, who’s scheduled to compete in four events at the Winter Games that open tomorrow in Vancouver. “I just had to keep telling myself: ‘Go for this. Don’t let financial reasons keep you from chasing your dream.’ ”

It’s a pep talk that more and more U.S. Olympic athletes are having with themselves as sponsorship and endorsement opportunities evaporate in the global recession like a puddle in unseasonably warm Vancouver. It doesn’t mean the Olympics are any less prestigious for athletes. It just means that unless you’re snowboarder Shaun White or alpine ski queen Lindsey Vonn or have really rich parents, you’re probably going to be poor doing it.

The U.S. Olympic Committee says it paid out $16.5 million to its winter sports national governing bodies for the 2009-10 season, a substantial increase compared with the year before the 2006 Winter Games. But much of that money goes to staffing and infrastructure, and it’s performance-based. The sports with consistent international success get the most; the also-rans are left largely to fend for themselves.

So ski jumper Nick Alexander works as a dishwasher in Park City, Utah. Teammate Peter Frenette scoops ice cream. Freestyle aerialist Jeret Peterson hangs drywall and lays tile. Luger Megan Sweeney is a waitress at the Downhill Grill in Lake Placid, N.Y.

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