Procter & Gamble to sponsor USOC family center at Vancouver Games

USOC finds sponsor for Olympic family center

DENVER — The U.S. Olympic Committee found a sponsor that will help alleviate one of the biggest distractions for athletes when the games come around: taking care of their families.

A new USOC sponsor, Procter & Gamble, agreed to bankroll the Family Home, which will serve as a meeting place for athletes and families, where they can watch events, eat, pick up tickets and surf the internet.

“It’s huge,” Mike English, the USOC’s director of sport performance, said Thursday. “It’s performance-enhancing in a sense because this has historically been a challenge in the Olympics. Athletes are trying to balance their environment, making sure they’re taking care of training and competition, but also making sure their friends and family are taken care of.”

Bank of America sponsored the family center at Olympics past, but when the bank dropped its USOC sponsorship last year, many on the Olympic scene were as worried about the loss of the family center as the millions of dollars the sponsor provided.

Procter & Gamble helped fill the gap on both fronts.

“It had been recognized as a hole,” English said. “There was great concern that there wasn’t going to be this kind of center in place for the games. That’s the nice part of having a sponsor step up quickly.”

The USOC will send more than 300 athletes and coaches to the Vancouver Olympics, and almost all are allotted a certain number of tickets for friends and family. Distributing the tickets and finding a meeting place are almost always the biggest outside distractions for Olympic athletes.

“It’s just an overall enhancer to the environment,” English said. “And this comes at the perfect time.”