Not all Olympic winners get big-money deals

By Tomoeh Murakami Tse

updated 8:05 a.m. ET Feb. 15, 2006

If there ever was an Olympic tale made for the front of a cereal box, Chris Thorpe's story seemed to be it.

After a career slowed by dislocated shoulders, chronic back spasms and two failed attempts to win a medal, he finally took home a silver in Nagano in 1998. It was the first-ever medal for an American in the sport of luge.

"It was pretty crazy, getting whisked from the track to the TV set," he said. "It was overwhelming."

Less overwhelming, however, was the effect on his wallet. There were parades and television appearances, but there was no cereal box. He failed to land multiyear endorsement deals, or even a single TV commercial, even after adding another medal -- a bronze -- four years later in Salt Lake City. These days, Thorpe works as a personal trainer and collects a few thousand dollars for the occasional speaking engagement.

More than most, Thorpe understands a simple reality for cashing in on the Olympics: The color of the medal matters, the sport matters, and fame is fleeting.

As the Turin Games enter their fifth day, the business world's quadrennial crush to market winning athletes to U.S. consumers is well underway.

"The calls have already started to come," Peter Carlisle, director of Olympics and action sports for the marketing firm Octagon, said in a phone interview from Turin soon after medal-winning performances by three clients -- snowboarders Hannah Teter, Gretchen Bleiler and Danny Kass.

"It's a lot tougher than people think," said Arthur Kaminsky, a longtime sports agent. "In 1984, Americans won 83 gold medals in Los Angeles. There weren't 83 millionaires coming out of there."

Marketing experts say agents must capitalize on a small window of opportunity that closes three to eight months after the Olympic flame is extinguished. The 2006 Games, they say, also represent a new challenge. U.S. athletes must be marketed at a time when television ratings are falling, corporate marketing strategies are shifting and the battle for Olympic-related advertising is increasingly competitive.

To rise above the clutter, experts said, athletes must have the right combination of a winning Olympic performance and telegenic personality, as well as a bit of good luck and timing. The exception to the advertising world's conventional wisdom can be luminaries such as Michelle Kwan and Bode Miller, whose marketability, analysts said, transcend their sports.

Miller, who has cultivated an image as the bad boy of Alpine skiing, raked in endorsements even before the Turin Olympics began, though he has turned in disappointing performances in his first two events. And although Kwan dropped out of the Olympics this week, many experts agreed that her long-term marketability should endure.

Some, however, said Kwan -- a nine-time national champion -- might have cost herself a multimillion-dollar payday by not adding an Olympic gold medal to her trophies.

"It's the difference between people looking at her as achieving her dream and people looking at her and feeling maybe a little sorry for her," said Bob Dorfman, executive creative director of Pickett Advertising in San Francisco. "It's the difference of someone saying: 'Now there's a winner. She did everything she set out to do.' "

Her agent, Shep Goldberg, disagreed.

"History has proven 100 percent the opposite," he said yesterday, noting that although Coca-Cola dropped a commercial portraying fans cheering on Kwan, it kept another with her in it.

For most Olympic athletes, a gold medal is a prerequisite to participate in the elite race for endorsements.

"With a few exceptions, it starts with gold," Dorfman said. "Americans love winning, and gold is the ultimate victory."

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