Some of the most heated competition at the Winter Games is taking place off the ice.

Official Olympic sponsors McDonald’s and AT&T are charging rivals Subway and Verizon with unsportsmanlike conduct.

In Verizon’s current TV spot, two speed skaters race while the announcer asks, “What does it take to succeed … in a place with the highest level of competition?”

Subway’s spot features Olympian Michael Phelps swimming toward Canada, “Where the action is this winter.”

Neither specifically mentions the Olympics although the innuendo is clear. Neither are an official sponsor.

Ambush marketing attempts to attach a brand to a major event without paying for the right to do so. In the process, it may undermine the activities of a rival that owns the legal rights to sponsor the event.

In a post at Suite 101.com, Carrol Trosclair identifies typical ambush techniques:

• Sponsor and promote athletes, both current and past Olympic stars
• Operate promotional vehicles as close as possible to Olympic venues
• Launch new product lines with Olympic-related names
• Distribute promotional materials at Olympic-related events
• Conduct events as close to Olympic sites and functions as legally allowed
• Run competing commercials during programs covering the Olympics
• Buy up billboards in the vicinity of the event

Jon Weinbach, in a post at FanHouse, reports on a statement released by the U.S. Olympic Committee which cites marketers who attempt to “benefit from an association with the Olympic marks without providing any financial support to America’s athletes and the global Olympic Movement.” Such marketers, the USOC says, “damage official Olympic sponsors and undermine the United States Olympic Committee’s financial means to ensure that America’s athletes are given the best chance to perform.”

In a post at Sports Illustrated.com, new USOC chief executive officer Scott Blackmun is reported as saying, “Olympism is based upon a spirit of fair play, and ambush marketing clearly violates that spirit,”

USOC’s chief marketing officer, Lisa Baird, said in an article at Reuters, “The way that we help the Olympic movement, we use the marks to raise the revenue for our athletes and when a company crosses that line, and I’ll name Subway as one of those companies, it hurts our athletes. They need to know that we feel they have crossed the line and we are going to continue to be right after them.”

“It’s actually very deviant when you think about it, because these campaigns take months to produce,” said Rob Prazmark, an Olympics marketing veteran and former sales consultant for the USOC, in an interview with FanHouse. The USOC has to take a stance against such “parasitic” campaigns, he says, because “if they can’t protect their sponsors, then the framework for the organization’s entire existence begins to break down.”

Ambush marketing at the Olympics isn’t new.

“The vulnerability of the sponsors was brought into the world spotlight at the 2008 Beijng Summer Olympics,” Trosclair says. “Li Ning, one of China’s greatest athletes of all time, was secretly and justifiably chosen to light the Olympic cauldron during the games’ opening ceremony. The honor brought him, and the sports apparel company he founded, worldwide publicity and a prominent spot in Olympic history.”

This was a problem for Adidas, which ” … had spent millions of dollars to become a major sponsor of the Beijing Olympics, then had to stand by and watch its biggest Chinese competitor steal one of the biggest moments of the games.”

The games continue. How can official sponsors protect themselves from ambush?