USOC Marks 100 Days Until Vancouver With Events Around N.Y.

USOC, Corporate Partners Hold '10 Vancouver Olympics Celebration At Rockefeller Center

Team USA and its corporate partners took over Rockefeller Center today to celebrate the 100-day mark until the Vancouver Games. USOC partners and U.S. NGBs set up a series of informational booths in tents ringing the Rockefeller Center ice rink. More than five partners activated at the event. Coca-Cola offered product sampling, branded T-shirt giveaways and a sweepstakes for a branded snowboard signed by U.S. snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler, while Acer set up a small booth displaying its computers and had U.S. fencer Tim Morehouse blog live on teamusa.org from the event. 24 Hour Fitness sponsored an Olympic sport aptitude test, McDonald's sampled products from 7:00-9:00am ET and Hilton Worldwide offered a sweepstakes for prizes and sponsored free skates with U.S. figure skaters Sarah Hughes and JoJo Starbuck. A host of NGBs also had a presence, including U.S. Biathlon, USA Bobsled & Skeleton, USA Curling, U.S. Figure Skating, USA Hockey, USA Luge and US Ski & Snowboard. At a morning breakfast hosted by the USOC, the organization's Acting CEO Stephanie Streeter said, "These last 100 days are the culmination of athletes hard work. ... We're introducing fans and hoping they actually participate in these sports." Among guests in attendance at the breakfast were USOC honorary President Peter Ueberroth; GE President of Olympic Sponsorship & Corporate Sales Peter Foss, Hilton Senior VP/Brand Management & Marketing Jeff Diskin, McDonald's Senior Dir of Alliance Marketing John Lewicki, OMD/Optimum Sports Dir Sports Media Tom McGovern, North America GroupM Entertainment Sports President Greg Luckman; IOC Head of Int'l Business Development Evan Hunt, ESPN VP/Corporate Projects Rob Simmelkjaer; IBAF President Harvey Schiller, NHL Senior VP/Integrated Sales Keith Wachtel; 21 Marketing Founder Rob Prazmark; USOC COO Norman Bellingham and reps from the USA Bid Committee for the World Cup (Tripp Mickle, SportsBusiness Journal).

FITNESS MODELS: 24 Hour Fitness, the largest privately-owned U.S. fitness chain and the Official Fitness Center Sponsor of the '10 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Teams, today announced its partnership with six Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls for the '10 Games -- Bleiler, figure skater Rockne Brubaker, short track speedskater J.R. Celski, Paralympic skier Chris Devlin-Young, speedskater Tucker Fredricks and skier Julia Mancuso (Mickle).

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PROMO TIME: NBC is noting the 100-day countdown for the Vancouver Games today by putting Olympians on several of its programs throughout the day. It started this morning when Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig, members of the Gold Medal-winning '80 U.S. Olympic hockey team, joined '80 U.S.S.R. hockey team member Vladimir Myshkin on “Today.” U.S. snowboarder Shaun White also was on set this morning to promote the Games and will appear on “Last Call with Carson Daly” tomorrow. NBC will use musical artist Matisyahu’s song “One Day” in its promotion campaign, premiering a TV spot using the song in the 8:00pm ET hour across all NBC networks -- NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, The Weather Channel, Bravo, Oxygen, SyFy, Universal Sports, Universal HD, Chiller and Sleuth (John Ourand, THE DAILY). White also discussed the changes to his life since winning a Gold Medal at the '06 Turin Games. White: "Everything just kind of blew up. I was already becoming successful with the sport. It was just that extra push over the edge. I went on this whirlwind tour and people were applauding in the airports. It was wild" ("Today," NBC, 11/4).

LET ME UPGRADE YOU: TECHCRUNCH.com's Erick Schonfeld reported NBC today launched a series of changes to NBCOlympics.com as part of the run-up to the Vancouver Games. The site will continue using a video player based on Microsoft Silverlight technology "to offer full HD videos." The new player will have "DVR-like functionality, with the ability to rewind the video, highlight clips and save them." The video player also will incorporate Facebook Connect. In addition, the site is "giving its photo slideshows an upgrade" (TECHCRUNCH.com, 11/3).