The Tongan Olympic Luger Who Turned Out To Be An Underwear Marketing Scam
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Surmise if the events surrounding 1988 Jamaican bobsled team that inspired the flick Cool Runnings happened today, in the age of the internet and 24-hour sports coverage. Now gather one of those athletes, by pure chance, had been named Calvin Klein. And after his emergence on the international background, he became a spokesman for the manufacturer—the perfect convergence of media hype and corporate synergy.
Then visualize if, just before the Olympics, it turned out Calvin Klein the bobsledder wasn't real, and had been an gismo of Calvin Klein the brand.
Let's start at the beginning. The actual, true beginning, because the ceremonial biography of one Bruno Banani is at best a lie and at worst identity flimflam perpetrated on an international level. In 2008, Princess Salote of Tonga put out a call to her islet nation of 103,000, looking for at least one Winter Olympian to represent the power. Banani, a 21-year-old IT student who thought it would be fun to be a luger, answered the call, and for the before few years has been living and training with the German national team, with an eye on 2014.
Source: Deadspin