It's a shame Nesbitt had to go outside Canada for key sponsor

When speed skater Christine Nesbitt competed at the world sprint championships last weekend, one of her more prominent sponsors was a Dutch telecom company, Galaxy Group.

You can see them displayed here over her heart and on her left shoulder.

Kevin Jagger, an investment broker turned Canadian long track speed skater, writes about the Dutch deal in his superb blog on amateur sport sponsorship, which is generally written to help out other athletes.

Jagger doesn’t make a big deal out of it that it’s a Dutch company. Quite the contrary. He points out how BCE dropped out from sponsoring the Canadian speed skating team – not an unusual happenstance in the post Vancouver Olympic era – and the absence of the Bell logo meant skaters could get their own deals with telecommunications firms.

Nesbitt is a good fit for the Galaxy Group. She’s a huge name in the Netherlands and speed skating is televised there like hockey is here so they’ll get tons of exposure.

This isn’t unprecedented, either. Jeremy Wotherspoon’s big sponsor at the height of his career was a Dutch company. The Canadian canoe kayak team once had a Hungarian sponsor.

Canadian teams and athletes have to take it where they can get it. There was no windfall even for the Vancouver Olympic gold medallists like Nesbitt.

Nesbitt got a deal recently with a Canadian company that makes compression wear, CEP Canada, but you can bet it wasn't for significant dollars.

One can’t help but wonder what it says about us as a nation celebrating their own that an Olympic champion, world champion, world record holder and winner of countless 2011 Athlete of the Year awards can’t bag a Canadian telecommunications sponsor.

Not only are there Nesbitt’s athletic achievements, but she’s a great role model and one of the country’s big hopes heading to the 2014 Olympics.

Her sponsorship should be a 'Made In Canada' production.

 

Comments

[Tim Dalliday]

Missed opportunity for telco's like Telus, Rogers etc. especially when you have an Olympic champion and new world record holder! Only in Canada eh!