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2012 LONDON OLYMPICS

ATHLETICS

Puma expects swift sales with Bolt boost

With the London Olympic games just days away, German sportswear giant Puma is pinning its hopes on sprint legend Usain Bolt to speed up sales and outpace its bigger competitors Adidas and Nike.

Puma expects swift sales with Bolt boost
Photo: DPA

Bolt, the world’s fastest man who blew away his rivals to win three gold medals in Beijing four years ago, is also a key plank in the firm’s strategy to shift its focus from lifestyle clothing to sportswear.

Sportswear currently accounts for 35 percent of Puma sales but the firm’s boss Franz Koch wants to boost that to 40 percent and the company sees its sponsorship of double world-record holder Bolt as key to that aim.

“We are keen to underline that we are strong in both sectors, lifestyle and performance,” Puma’s head of international sports marketing, Christian Voigt, told AFP.

Who better than the charismatic Bolt and the Jamaican team, also sponsored by Puma, to push the firm’s dual-track strategy?

“Usain Bolt and the Jamaican team allow us to build a bridge between lifestyle and performance, a bridge they built themselves,” said Voigt.

“The way of life in Jamaica, its music, its relaxed attitude, its style, its colours. This is also Puma’s spirit,” he said.

And Puma certainly aims to capitalise on Jamaican cultural history, hiring Cedella Marley, daughter of reggae legend Bob, to design the clothes for the team.

With profits hit by the eurozone crisis, Puma is hoping for a strong Olympics to revive its fortunes.

In an earnings statement issued in April, it said net profits were down some five percent in the first three months of the year, to €74 million ($90 million) on sales of €821 million – a gain of six percent.

For the full year, Puma is aiming at an increase of between five and 10 percent in turnover with a roughly five-percent boost in net profits. It is due to release updated figures on July 26.

It certainly has fierce competition in the run-up to the Olympics, billed as the “Battle of Britain” in terms of the fight between sports companies, with Germany’s Adidas and US firm Nike leading the pack.

Adidas is pulling no punches at the Games. Its status as an official partner allows it to kit out some 85,000 people, including flame-bearers, officials, as well as the athletes in the Olympic village.

In addition, Adidas is responsible for the kit of 11 national Olympic committees, including the British, German and French teams, and will have a presence in 25 of the 26 disciplines showcased at the Games.

Adidas has invested €100 million in the London Olympics and is hoping for a return of the same amount, plus a huge amount of visibility.

Nike, meanwhile, is not short of ammunition, with its sponsorship of the powerful American squad.

The US firm is also winning the media scrap on social networks, a key battleground, said Hartmut Heinrich, a consultant in marketing strategy at Vivaldi Partners.

Heinrich added that Puma’s strategy of focusing on one athlete was risky but has paid off in the past.

“Puma’s strategy is one of David versus Goliath. They fight a guerrilla campaign which consists of obtaining the maximum effect with a small budget,” the analyst told AFP.

“Puma always tries to sponsor one sportsperson in particular. Therefore they take more risk but until now, it has always worked well for them,” added Heinrich, referring to Bolt.

AFP/bk

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SPORT

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation

The Paralympics is full of stories of disabled athletes overcoming the odds to achieve sporting greatness but few bear the trauma of Jean-Baptiste Alaize.

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation
Jean-Baptiste Alaize training in Antibes. All photos: AFP

The 29-year-old French sprinter and long-jumper, who features in Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix released on Wednesday, was just three years old when he lost his right leg.

Not by accident or illness but by the brutal hack of a machete.

A child caught up in the civil war in Burundi in October 1994, he watched as his mother was beheaded.

“For years, every time I closed my eyes, I had flashes. I saw my mother being executed in front of me,” he tells AFP after a training session in Antibes, running his finger across his throat.

The killers left the Tutsi boy for dead. Alaize carries a large scar on his back but he was also slashed across the neck, right arm and right leg by his Hutu neighbours.

He woke up in hospital several days later, alive but missing the lower part of his right leg which had had to be amputated.

“With my mother, we ran, we ran, but we didn't manage to run far,” he says. “We were executed 40 metres from the house.”

A decade later, after coming to France in 1998 and being adopted by a French family, he joined the athletics club in Drôme.

Fitted with a prosthetic limb, he discovered that running gave him his first night without a nightmare since the attack.

“From my first steps on the track, I had the impression that I had to run as long as possible, so as not to be caught,” says Alaize who now lives in Miami.

“I remember like it was yesterday my first night after this session, it was… wow! I had cleared my mind. I was free.

“My energy, my hatred, were focussed on the track. I understood that sport could be my therapy.”

He tried horseback riding and enjoyed it, reaching level six, out of seven, until he pulled the plug.

“It was my horse that let off steam and not me,” he laughs.

The psychologist did not work out either.

“She made me make circles and squares. After a few sessions I told her that I wanted to change my method.”

However he did click with his school physical education teacher, who directed him to athletics after he had anchored his team to a spectacular “comeback” win in a 4×100 metre relay.

His classmates had no idea he was an amputee. He had hidden it to avoid teasing and more racial abuse.

“I was called 'bamboula', dirty negro, the monkey. It was hard.”

Fortunately, the Alaize family, who adopted him after he had spent five years in a Bujumbura orphanage where his father had abandoned him, gave Jean-Baptiste a base and a home that he had not had for years.

“When I arrived here I didn't know it was possible,” he said.

“I had lost that side, to be loved. I still can't understand how racism can set in, when I see my parents who are white, and I am a black child… they loved me like a child.”

His parents, Robert and Daniele, had already adopted a Hutu child from Rwanda, renamed Julien.

John-Baptist was originally called Mugisha. It means “the lucky child” which is not quite how things worked out. His new family name, though, suits him better. Alaize is a pun in French for 'a l'aise' – at ease.

The French disabled sports federation spotted the prodigy, and he began collecting his first trophies, including four junior world titles at long jump, three of them with world records.

“It was starting to change my life and I was happy to represent France,” he says.

He went to the Paralympic Games in London (2012) and Rio (2016), where he finished fifth in the long jump, just five centimetres short of the bronze medal.

Now armed with his state-of-the-art prosthesis, which he nicknamed Bugatti, he was dreaming of taking a step up at Tokyo 2020 and going home to France with a medal but the postponement of the Games has decimated his sponsorships.

“I'm still looking to compete at Tokyo 2021 or 2022 and Paris 2024,” he says.

“If I don't succeed, I will have to turn the page which would be sad.”

He hopes that Rising Phoenix will raise his profile and maybe attract some sponsors.

The documentary's producer Ian Bonhote is in no doubt that Alaize's star is rising.

“He bursts through the screen. His story will resonate,” he says.

“The nine athletes in our documentary all have different backgrounds, but none survived what Jean-Baptiste suffered. His disability was imposed on him in such a savage and violent way.”

Rising Pheonix is available now to view on Netflix.

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