Olympics Still Months Away, Swimmer Brings Home Gold

Generally speaking, Olympic athletes have a narrow window of marketability, says Carlisle, who is based in Portland, Maine, and heads the Olympic division for the sports marketing firm of Octagon, headquartered in McLean.

The window, which comes around only with each four-year Olympic cycle, occurs during the games, and about a month or so before and after, he says.

The challenge is to expand that window. "Can you keep the . . . marketability alive beyond the window? Can you potentially enable that athlete to transcend the Olympic space altogether?"

Fast Lane Speeds Up

The lights were low inside the crowded second-floor Manhattan nightclub, Pressure. People pretending to be scientists walked around in white lab coats and plastic safety glasses. The audience -- business executives, public relations people and the press -- began to take seats in the rows of white armless chairs that resembled huge marshmallows.

An ominous-sounding techno track thumped: "I am legendary, you are not; I am legendary, you are not."

Up on stage, behind opaque, illuminated screens, shadowy human figures appeared. One by one, to scattered applause, they emerged from behind the screens, four swimmers clad in what look like fish-colored leotards.

"It's truly scary how awesome they are," a female announcer said, introducing Olympic swimmers Amanda Beard, Jenny Thompson, Lenny Krayzelburg, and "oh yeah, three-time world record holder and the only male to break five world records at one single meet: phenom Michael Phelps."

The hyped-up, high-glitz, multimedia experience, designed to simulate a science fiction "aqualab," had been created to debut a bathing suit.

It was Speedo's new Fastskin FSII racing suit, the super light, super tight, super expensive garment that is supposed to increase a swimmer's speed in the water.

Speedo had brought in four of the dozens of top swimmers it sponsors to model the suit, but Phelps was the headliner. He has what the company calls its "richest swimwear sponsorship of all time," one that his agent says is probably worth between $2 million and $6 million through 2009.

Though he has never won an Olympic medal, and the other three all have, it is "the Phelps meteor," as one sports agent put it, that Speedo and many others are gambling will streak over Athens this summer.

The 76-year-old brand, whose net revenues topped $240 million last year, has been eyeing Phelps since he was 12, according to Stu Isaac, a former collegiate swimmer and coach, and the company's senior vice president of team sales and marketing.

The Los Angeles-based firm, which was born in the mind of an Australian underwear maker in 1928, tracks many young swimmers at clubs around the country. Phelps quickly stood out.

By the summer of 2001, he had gotten so good that he had a serious decision to make. He faced the prospect of earning big time endorsement money. But if he did, he would have to forego swimming in college, where professional athletes may not compete, and lose the athletic scholarship he was almost certain to get.

The majority of top high school swimmers choose college, Isaac says, and it is a rare few whose prospects are good enough to make it worthwhile to turn pro beforehand.