Phelps looks to dip toes in tech
Turkish weightlifter loses doping appeal
SAN JOSE, California, Dec 1, (AP): Michael Phelps wants to dive into Silicon Valley’s investment opportunities as he tries to make the transition from Olympic swimming star and product pitchman to entrepreneur.
“I would love to get involved, whether it’s in a couple little startups here and there, take a little risk, have some fun and see where it goes,” Phelps said in an interview during a recent visit to San Jose, California while appearing at an Intuit software conference.
For now, Phelps isn’t providing any details about what he is going to do, though he says he has been getting advice from venture capitalists and other experienced investors in Silicon Valley startups.
Getting into tech investing would be a new direction for Phelps, whose business experience to date consists mostly of his own line of swimwear and endorsement deals with the likes of Under Armour, Visa and Wheaties.
These and other big brands have paid him an estimated $75 million during his career. That’s far more than the $1.65 million that he received from the US Olympic Committee and Speedo for winning a record 28 medals, including 23 golds, in five Olympics. He’s still promoting products; he is currently doing commercials for computer chipmaker Intel in a campaign that began in October.
Whatever he does next, Phelps isn’t ready to start his own investment fund, like retired Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant did earlier this year with entrepreneur Jeff Stibel. And if Phelps has ideas for founding a startup of his own, he’s keeping them to himself.
Turkish weightlifter Sibel Ozkan has lost an appeal against a doping sanction which cost her a silver medal from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Ozkan, who finished second in the women’s 48-kilogram class in Beijing, tested positive for the steroid stanozolol in a reanalysis of her urine sample this year and was retroactively disqualified by the IOC. Ozkan contended in her appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport that her positive test resulted from a contaminated protein supplement.
CAS arbitrator Michael Beloff ruled there was “no evidence of the contamination” and that even if her
claim were true, Ozkan had shown “no due diligence” in dealing with a supposedly contaminated supplement.
CAS says Ozkan also offered “sensitive information about the Turkish Weightlifting Federation in exchange
for a possible agreement with the respondent to dispose of this case.”
If the IOC decides to reallocate the medals, Taiwan’s Chen Wei-Ling would receive silver, with bronze going to Im Jyoung-Hwa of South Korea.