NPR.

This is the Indicator from Planet Money.

I'm Waylon Wong.

Here at the indicator, we've been following the Winter Olympics.

And, you know, I, like many other people, love figure skating.

I love the ice dancing. I like the short program. I like the free skate. I like the Twizzles.

I like the lifts. So we have invited Oregon Public Broadcasting's Lillian Carewake on to help us understand what it actually cost to get to the Olympics as a figure

skater. Hi, Waylon. I'm so excited to be here. I am primarily an economics reporter. So it is such a delight

to have two weeks every four years where I'm going to talk about knife shoes instead.

This is your moment to shine in a slightly different way than how you usually shine.

So will we get to see you at the Olympics this week?

Absolutely not.

I did skate competitively, but I didn't really realize how expensive it was going to get when I started.

And that leads us to today's indicator, which is one million dollars. That's right.

It can cost an average of one million dollars to make the Olympics. That's Timothy Gable's estimate.

He won an Olympic bronze medal in 2002. Pretty daunting. It is a million-dollar bet on like a maybe of a maybe, of a maybe.

After the break, how the costs grow is skaters climb the ranks. We talked to three

U.S. Olympic medalists on how top skaters, like most Olympic athletes, aren't breaking even.

Okay, Lillian, walk me through this. A kid starts ice skating. Where does the money really start to kick in?

Well, when I started, I did group lessons through the single jumps pretty much. And then once you start

jumping doubles and competing locally,

I needed a private coach, and that's pretty standard for most skaters.

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