Beware the Olympic ad curse
Every night before the track competition, an Olympic promotional commercial played on the big screen at the Bird’s Nest.
They just showed it again before the Closing Ceremony.
The commercial featured a Greek sage talking to various athletes with names like “The Invincible Man” and “Flying Girl.”
The athletes were real: The Invincible Man was Roger Federer. Flying Girl was Italian gymnast Vanessa Ferrari. Other athletes in the clip were Chinese basketball player Yao Ming, Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, French swimmer Laure Manadou, Ethopian distance runners Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele, Swedish track star Carolina Kluft and Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang.
If the IOC is considering a similar ad for the 2012 London Olympics, they might have trouble finding athletes to participate.
Only three of the Olympians in this year’s ad won a medal here.
Federer won a gold in doubles, but came up empty in singles. Isinbayeva won gold in the pole vault and Bekele won golds in both the 5,000- and 10,000-meter runs. But the other six athletes competed in 10 events and came up empty.
The Olympic ad curse struck Liu Xiang


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