Rick Santorum suggested on Saturday that Mitt Romney was hypocritical to bash the practice of earmarking federal legislation, while also touting his leadership of the Olympics -- which benefitted from earmarks.

But a review of Senate shows that earmarks which funded security at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics -- headed by Romney -- were supported by Santorum, then a senator from Pennsylvania.

Santorum cast "yea" votes for legislation with three earmarks totaling over $81 million in earmarks supporting the games, which occurred a year after the Sept. 11 attacks. A majority of the funds went to security, and a small portion to drug testing.

He called the federal funding for the games a "bailout" when speaking to voters in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday.

"One of the things he talks about the most is how he heroically showed up on the scene and bailed out and resolved the problems of the Salt Lake City Olympic games," Santorum said, as a few in the tea party audience chuckled. "He heroically bailed out the Salt Lake City Olympic games by heroically going to Congress and asking them for tens of millions of dollars to bail out the Salt Lake Olympic Games -- in an earmark. In an earmark for the Salt Lake Olympic Games."

A spokesman for Santorum, Hogan Gidley, said regardless of his candidate's vote, he still sees hypocrisy in Romney's position. "Romney said all earmarks are bad. Now is he saying some earmarks are good?" Gidley said. "For him to impugn earmarks by anyone, anywhere, anytime is extremely hypocritical considering Mitt Romney lobbied for federal money on many occasions."

He suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that if Romney continues to tout his experience leading the games, he ought to share credit with Santorum for "bailing out the Olympics."

"Federal dollars had to bail out the Olympics. It wasn't his abilities," Gidley said, referring to Romney. "It was dollars from the taxpayers."

The votes were first reported by the Cincinnati Inquirer.