VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – How’s this for the glamour of being an Olympic athlete in Canada?

News1130 is speaking with a local bobsledder who has had to resort to selling T-shirts to cover some of this season’s funding.

“Bobsleigh Canada lost its major sponsor last year, which was Visa, and so now the athletes have some pretty substantial team fees and have to make up that gap until Canada comes up with another sponsor,” says Justin Kripps, a former SFU track and field star who now pilots for Team Canada’s bobsleigh team.

“So I’m telling T-shirts right now to raise $5,000 for my team fees.”

It’s not an Olympic year, which means it can be difficult for some of our country’s top athletes to find enough money to continue training and competing.

Kripps, who lives in Summerland, made his Olympic debut in Vancouver at the 2010 Olympics as a push athlete on veteran bobsledder Pierre Lueders’ team. He’s since moved up to the driver’s seat, looking towards Sochi 2014.

“I think there has been sort of an Olympic hangover, funding-wise, for sports in Canada. It was really good leading up to 2010 and I think the athletes showed the investment was worth it, winning all those medals, but it’s sort of dropped off a little bit,” says Kripps.

“We’re hoping now that we’re just two years out from the next Winter Olympics that it will pick up a little bit. It will definitely be a good show in Sochi again.”

In the meantime, he’s hoping for your support. If you buy a $25 Team Kripps Bobsleigh T-shirt by October 1st, you’re entered for a chance to win a ride with Kripps down the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

“We go from halfway up. It starts off kind of mellow, but all of a sudden you’re going 120 or 130 km/h and it starts to get pretty intense. You hit four or five G’s in the bottom corner so it’s a pretty good ride,” he explains.

Team Canada’s 2012/2013 season starts in a few weeks. It will be Kripps’ third season as a pilot, coming off  two seasons of gold medals, a record-breaking push-start at the Americas Cup, and Top 10 finishes in his World Cup debut in Calgary.