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Tracy Cameron and Melanie Kok may have won the bronze medal in women's lightweight doubles yesterday, but they don't have fixed addresses.

They have places where they lay their heads when training at Rowing Canada's national centre in London, Ont., but they are, effectively, nomad amateur athletes, travelling to camps around the world and spending no more than three weeks in any one place over the past year. Financially, they live off grants, the generosity of others and whatever money they are able to scrounge.

"It's a suitcase," Kok said when asked what home looked like. "There really is no such thing as home."

Yesterday, however, Cameron, a carded athlete, wasn't playing the poor athlete card. And the 33-year-old was challenging fellow Canadian Olympians to do the same.

"As elite athletes, we have to do a better job of [self-financing]," she said. "Instead of asking the government all the time for more money, more money, I think it's up to us to take some responsibility to go out there and find it. The corporate world is happy to come on board, you just have to ask. I think we should put a challenge out there to other athletes to do the same."

Cameron knows her subject. After winning the 2005 world championship alongside Kok in lightweight quadruple sculls, Cameron decided to shoot for the Beijing Olympics and knew she would need more than federal, provincial and sports federation grants to make ends meet.

"I thought 'If I'm going to do this, I'm going to need financial support because carding isn't going to cut it,' " she said.

So, Cameron sold herself.

Based in Calgary at the time, Cameron put together a proposal and shopped it around the city's corporate community. Two companies — Midnight Oil Exploration Ltd. and Daylight Energy Ltd. — sponsored her.

"I marketed myself," she said. "Midnight Oil and Daylight Energy took a risk and have supported me ever since. They have made the difference."

In London, Cameron lives with a family as though she were a billet with the OHL's London Knights. Kok, 24, lived with three University of Western Ontario students in a house.

From those "home bases" — not homes — Kok and Cameron turned themselves into Olympic medalists, beating a German boat by 0.004 seconds. They were joined by two other Canadian crews on the podium as the Olympic regatta wrapped up at the Shunyi Rowing-Canoeing Park. The only Canadian boat that failed to win a medal was the women's eight, which finished fourth.

The lightweight men's four, whose coach Bent Jensen is suffering from pancreatic cancer, also won a bronze medal. The crew — Jon Beare, Iain Brambell, Mike Lewis and Liam Parsons — fell to fourth place past the midway point, but rallied in the final 500 metres and said it was now their turn to coach.

"What we have gone through is extra special because of the surrounding circumstances," Brambell said. "We'll continue to stay connected [with Jensen]. He lives in Victoria, so it's important that we continue to support him as he supported us."