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Yamaguchi’s Endorsement Deals Prove Good as Gold : Marketing: The Olympic skater’s business managers find no evidence that her Japanese heritage makes advertisers balk.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Subtle racism and the current climate of Japan-bashing are depriving figure-skating champion Kristi Yamaguchi of her just desserts as a commercial property, or so the story goes.

Corporate America is either too bigoted or too craven to choose an Asian American as a spokeswoman, the story goes, so the Olympic gold medalist from Fremont is missing her prime chance.

It’s a compelling story and rife with irony, but at least so far, it doesn’t appear to be true.

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Yamaguchi’s business managers say there is no evidence that her ethnicity is holding advertisers back. In fact, they say, she already has five blue-chip endorsement deals tucked in her sequined pocket and several lucrative offers on the table.

“Kristi Yamaguchi has more commercial sponsorship than any other American skater, period,” said Brian Murphy, publisher of Sports Marketing Letter.

Murphy estimates that if Yamaguchi were to devote full attention to commercial pursuits--a choice she will ponder after the skating World Championships in Oakland next week--she could make more than $2 million this year on endorsements alone.

That wouldn’t put her in the stratosphere with $10-million players such as Michael Jordan and Arnold Palmer, but it would make her one of the highest-paid women athletes in the marketing world, after the likes of Monica Seles, Chris Evert and Jennifer Capriati.

The ethnicity issue was first broached in a March 9 article in Business Week, which implied that Yamaguchi’s Japanese surname and appearance were hindering her commercial prospects.

The story snowballed, appearing in newspapers, on National Public Radio and on sports talk shows.

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But Kevin Albrecht, Yamaguchi’s agent at International Management Group’s office in Toronto, said that when companies started making inquiries about her after the Olympics, “the issue never came up about Kristi’s Japanese-American heritage.”

Advertisers who signed Yamaguchi to endorsement deals before the Olympics say they chose her because of her appeal as an American athlete.

Kellogg Co. pictured Yamaguchi as an Olympic hopeful on boxes of its Special K cereal. When she won the skating competition at Albertville, Kellogg rushed out a new box showing her with her gold medal--the first time the company has used an active athlete more than once, spokeswoman Karen MacLeod said.

IMG’s Albrecht said Yamaguchi will wait until after the World Championships to decide which, if any, of the pending commercial offers to pursue and whether to turn professional. As an amateur, she can make commercials, but her income must be placed in a trust fund administered by the U.S. Figure Skating Assn.

Some experts say there undoubtedly are corporate executives who would avoid using her because of her ethnicity, but it is not a major factor in her marketability.

“Would it be better if she was blonde and blue-eyed and from Greenwich, Conn.?” New York talent agent Martin Blackman asked rhetorically. “Yeah, it’d be better. Would it be better if we weren’t in a Japan-bashing mood? Yeah. But those things are just dimples.”

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If anything squelches Yamaguchi’s earning power, he said, it will be a recession that is making advertisers nervous about spending big money on anybody.

Even that might not do it.

Product endorsement deals are still being made despite the downturn.

Nuprin’s campaign with tennis veteran Jimmy Connors won the analgesic brand tremendous attention last year after the 39-year-old Connors reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open.

Yamaguchi “has absolutely the same potential as Dorothy Hamill or Peggy Fleming,” said Ed Lewi, an Albany, N.Y., marketing consultant to the U.S. Figure Skating Assn., referring to two previous American Olympians whose commercial careers are still in bloom decades after their gold medals.

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