Ex-Husky Eleanor Fulton writes about losing her sponsorship...

It’s a reality of the professional track & field world that athletes lose their sponsorship, whether it’s because of injuries, budget cuts, reallocation of funds, or just plain underperformance.

Until the various alphabet-soup organizations that govern track and field loosen up the rules further, professional track & field athletes are stuck with apparel and athletic shoe companies as their primary source of income, next to prize money. 

You don’t see track & field athletes have as their main sponsor an automobile company, a grocery chain, or even a bail bonds company (the “Bad News Bears” little league baseball team had Chico’s Bail Bonds as its sponsor).

University of Washington alum Eleanor Fulton (left/photo by Paul Merca), who finished eighth at the USATF One Mile Road Championship on Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa, wrote on her blog announcing that she had lost her sponsorship with Skechers Performance.

Though we knew each other from our association with the University of Washington track & field program, I didn’t really get to know her until she started competing as a post-collegiate athlete.  She ran on her first USA national team as a senior at last year’s IAAF world cross country championships in Kampala, Uganda, competing in the co-ed 4 x 2k relay team, with Pasco HS alum Marisa Howard, and Olympic 5000m silver medalist Paul Chelimo.

Here’s the link to Eleanor’s blog post—please give it a read!