Nigerians launch sled brand
Tuesday night, Nigeria’s women’s bobsled team made its heavily-hyped Olympic debut.
The squad was composed of U.S.-born athletes with Nigerian parents, but still earned plenty of attention from media and sponsors before the Games as the first bobsled team to represent an African nation. Their list of backers included Baltimore-based performance apparel maker Under Armour. But when Seun Adigun and Akuoma Omeoga lined up for their first heat, their shoes didn’t bear Under Armour’s signature “X” logo. Both athletes applied black tape and marker to their shoes, but still couldn’t fully obscure a logo sports fans and sneaker junkies recognize instantly — the familiar three stripes of Adidas.
In fairness, Adigun and Omeoga — last in the field of 20 after two runs — were hardly the only athletes to wear one brand of bodysuit and a different brand of shoes. Bobsled shoes are similar to a sprinter’s racing footwear, except where track shoes typically have seven to 10 spikes embedded in the forefoot, the bobsled version has dozens packed in for maximum traction. And over three days of men’s and women’s competition, the vast majority of competitors have worn Adidas spikes, regardless of what company makes the rest of their apparel.
The U.S. team also wears Under Armour, but several of its athletes took to the track in Adidas, while driver Elana Meyers Taylor wears Nike.
If you watched the women’s halfpipe competition and wondered why the competitor from Hungary was the only skier who didn’t catch any air, understand that Elizabeth Swaney planned it that way.
The 33-year-old has become one of the most polarizing figures in Pyeongchang, thanks to the strategy she employed to qualify and compete.
First, she found a country where she’s eligible and could earn a spot. According to published reports, Swaney first competed for her mother’s home country of Venezuela before switching to Hungary. Her grandparents make her eligible to compete for that country.
Then she started paying her own way to World Cup events — the fewer competitors the better. At each stop she’d cruise down the course with the sole goal of staying upright, knowing more daring competitors would lose points for crashing. After racking up several top-30 finishes, she qualified for the Games and turned in her underwhelming performance this week.
Some observers think Swaney is a genius who gamed the system; others see her as an opportunist who snuck in the Olympic back door. Twitter user Joe Fabisevich reminds us Swaney can be both.
“Elizabeth Swaney is the epitome of the American dream,” he tweeted Tuesday morning. “By doing the minimum amount of work required and finding loopholes in the rules you too can go to the Olympics.”
Olympic Athletes from Russia? Sure, but don’t try to force that name on Russian fans showing up at venues in Pyeongchang.
The New York Times reports that hardcore Russian supporters aren’t interested in the rebrand, and aren’t happy with an IOC decision that keeps athletes from flying the Russian flag.
Russia was banned from sending a team to Pyeongchang after an investigation revealed systematic doping and tampering with drug tests at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.
The IOC later granted waivers to Russian athletes untainted by the doping scandal, cobbling together the Olympic Athletes from Russia team. Flag-waving Russian spectators aren’t having it.
“Our athletes, they are like any other athletes,” Russian supporter Viacheslav Shkarin told the New York Times. “What has happened here is very unfair. We are angry.”
Though Tuesday, Olympic Athletes from Russia had won 11 medals, ranking seventh overall — but none had won gold.
Elizabeth Swaney’s odd Olympic journey draws mixed reviews