‘Boarders Rely on ‘Maine Guy’

After U.S. snowboarding sensations Hannah Teter and Gretchen Bleiler had gone 1-2 this week in the Olympic women’s halfpipe, Teter, amid the frenzy of cameras, notebooks, TV producers, autograph hounds, doping protocols, snapshot requests, American flags, TV morning shows and medal ceremonies, said, “I can’t even comprehend the coolness factor of what we just achieved.”

Bleiler echoed the emotion: “It’s pretty insane.” Fortunately, she added, “Peter and his guys are so on it.”

Peter Carlisle, 38, an agent who represents a wide range of Olympic athletes, has emerged in recent years as one of the most important and influential behind-the-scenes figures in the Olympic movement, building a reputation for integrity, attention to detail and creativity from a base in one of the most un-Madison Avenue-like locations in America -- Portland, Maine.

“It’s not about the money for me,” he said, sounding remarkably unlike a sports agent, then delivering an explanation. If it were about the money, he said, “I’d move out of Maine.”

The money comes in. But Carlisle says, it’s about the relationships he develops with his clients and, as he explained amid the frenzy enveloping the snowboarders, “You have one shot to develop their story.”

At these Games, besides Teter and Bleiler, Carlisle represents two other U.S. medalists -- Danny Kass, who won his second silver medal in the halfpipe, and Seth Wescott, winner of the inaugural men’s snowboard cross. That’s four of the 10 U.S. medals so far.

“To have him sitting in the car with me and going through these next two days together is a great reassurance,” Wescott said while en route from the mountains to the medals plaza.

Both halfpipe gold medalists from 2002 -- Ross Powers and Kelly Clark -- are Carlisle’s clients. So is Chris Klug, who won a bronze medal in snowboard’s parallel giant slalom event in 2002, only months after undergoing a liver transplant.

Michael Phelps, the swimming star who won eight medals, six gold, at the 2004 Athens Games, is a Carlisle client.

So too is Katie Hoff, another U.S. swimmer predicted by many to be a breakout star of the 2008 Beijing Games.

“He is clearly one of the best in the business,” said Michael Lynch, a senior executive at Visa, offering Carlisle the ultimate compliment in the competitive agent business: “He has always been a man of his word.”

That’s from being a Maine guy, Carlisle said, and Carlisle is a Maine guy through and through. He grew up in Cape Elizabeth, went to college at Bates, in Lewiston, and then to law school at the University of Maine in Portland.

The lawyer thing proved dull. Carlisle, though, had met an accomplished snowboarder, Ryan Mullen. In turn, Mullen introduced him to Powers -- who, at that point, had already won a bronze medal at the Nagano Games in 1998 and was on the lookout for an agent.

The courtship of Powers, as much as it was, included a meeting in a stairwell in Sunday River, Maine. It was the only quiet place in the lodge, Carlisle said.

Over a meal at an Applebee’s restaurant in Keene, N.H., Powers signed up.

“Ross got me in the game,” Carlisle said. “I built a business from nothing,” agreeing in 2001 to become part of Octagon, the mega-agency with offices worldwide.

He added, “My selling point was never, ‘Hey, I’m a great snowboarder and I can throw down with anybody and I understand snowboarding.’ My pitch was, ‘Snowboarding is your business or you wouldn’t be talking to me.’ You have to understand -- it’s a business.”

Powers said, “I remember when I met him, I thought, ‘He’s a good guy.’ He’s knowledgeable, and even though he didn’t know everything about snowboarding, he learned quick.”

Before the 2002 Salt Lake Games, it was obvious that snowboarding was headed for the spotlight -- at least it was obvious to Carlisle. Wescott had introduced him to snowboarding years before and Carlisle got the idea and the potential of it right away.

“I don’t think the general public wants to watch a Warren Miller movie on a Sunday afternoon,” Carlisle said, referring to the lush epics from the famed winter-sports filmmaker. “But they do want to watch snowboarding, even if they don’t do it, because it’s competition and you understand the drama.

“I started to represent the competitive snowboarders, in the halfpipe in particular, with the objective of peaking in Salt Lake City. That was the strategy that we had. We didn’t get lucky in Salt Lake. We had started in 1998.”

The 2006 strategy? Stay strong in the halfpipe and introduce Americans to snowboard cross -- depending in large measure on Wescott.

That’s not pressure, Wescott said, that’s opportunity. He said only minutes after winning gold, savoring the possibilities to come, “This was a huge opportunity for me and huge opportunity for Peter -- to portray who I was and am in the world of snowboarding.”