News Notes: Phelps’ Performance Boosts Speedo
With every record that falls in the pool, Speedo seems to benefit.
Over the course of the last week, the swimsuit manufacturer has seen record traffic on its Web site, and it has sold out jersey T-shirts it makes with Michael Phelps’ name on the back. The company is scrambling to get more jerseys made as Phelps prepares to go after his seventh gold medal.
“We were just overwhelmed by the demand,” said Craig Brommers, Speedo’s vice president of marketing.
The company also got a call from Dick’s Sporting Goods, one of the country’s largest sporting goods companies. The retailer feels like it “underbought” on men’s racing suits, Brommers said.
“There’s some real positive momentum coming out of these Games so far,” he added.
Still, the thing that impresses the Speedo staff — known in Beijng as Team Speedo — the most is the number of world records that have fallen. Brommers did some research and saw that this year there were 41 percent more world records broken than any year since 1980. Much of that is driven by Speedo’s new swimsuit, the LZR Racer.
“That’s been the best part,” Brommers said.
Chicago 2016 Effort Networking With “Surprises”
Chicago 2016 continues to work hard to network with as many IOC voters as possible here in Beijing and share its vision for a Chicago Games. That effort got a big boost on Tuesday night when the U.S. Olympic Committee hosted 23 IOC voters, several heads of national organizing committees and representatives from the three other bid cities for 2016 — Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janiero.
The event was mostly a chance to meet, drink and socialize, but the team from Chicago showed its new video “Chicago Surprises,” which is narrated by “CSI” star William Peterson. It’s built around the theme “surprising,” like that Chicago was once a flat prairie.
See it for yourself at www.chicago2016.org/news/pages/chicagosurprises.aspx.
London 2012 Courting Chinese Visitors
London’s tourism agency, Visit London, and the national tourist board, VisitBritain, hosted a reception for Chinese media today to showcase London and Britain as hosts of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. The reception was at the British Embassy and signals London’s plan to lure Chinese tourists to England in four years.
Would You Like Caviar With That?
One of the more odd — or at least unique — appearances occured Friday morning in Beijng. At a function organized by Around The Rings, the Olympics newsletter, Prince Albert of Monaco made an appearance at the McDonald’s on the Olympic Green. We realize McDonald’s is trying to tone up its image with lattes and such, but this seems a little over the top.
How often does royalty really wonder into a McDonald’s?
Always On Time
Cindy Crawford made an appearance at the Omega Pavilion. The model is a longtime Omega “ambassador.” Apparently, it caused quite a media frenzy.
