So this post turns out to be all about medal counts...
29 athletes who used K2 Inc. products at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turino, Italy won a combined 43 medals. K2 is a top ski, snowboard and skate manufacturer and the medals were won in alpine, Nordic and cross-country skiing, snowboarding and speed skating. So do Olympic champions make a difference from a sales/marketing perspective? All I can say is that every time I go skiing, I secretly hope I will get Dynastar skis because that's what Tommy Moe used when he won the Olympics back in 1994.
43 countries have at least one winter Olympic medal. Norway has the most with 98 gold, 98 silver and and 84 bronze, totaling 280 medals.
Great Britain will host the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics, in London. Britain has historically done very well at the Summer Olympics, having won 715 medals, and at least one gold at each Summer Games. But in the Winter Olympics? Not so much. They've only won 20 Winter medals. And to make this fit in to the countdown, at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina D'ampezzo, Italy, with a team of 43 athletes, Britain failed to win a single medal (as is the case of 6 other Winter Olympics as well).
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While I of naturally respect K2 as a leading Ski and Snowboard manufacturer, when I think Snowboard, I think Burton. Jake Burton Carpenter is one of the pioneers of snowboard manufacturing. To quote the bio on Wiki:
ReplyDelete"Carpenter's high school education began in Brooks School North Andover, Massachusetts.[2] After graduating from The Marvelwood School in Cornwall, CT he enrolled at the University of Colorado in Boulder. An avid skier, Carpenter hoped to join the university's successful ski team; however, his competitive skiing career ended in a car accident. After several years away from college he resumed his studies at New York University, graduating with a degree in economics. After college, Carpenter's interests returned to the slopes. Working from a barn in Londonderry, Vermont, he improved on the Snurfer, a basic toy snowboard which featured a rope to allow the rider some basic control over the board. By the late 70's, he joined a small cadre of manufacturers who had begun selling snowboards with design features such as a bentwood laminate core and a rigid binding which held the board firmly to the wearer's boot. Carpenter continues to run the Burton company, which has grown into one of the world's largest snowboard and snowboarding-equipment manufacturers."