Ice, Ice Baby: Colbert Nation Comes Through For U.S. Skaters

So if Stephen Colbert and his Colbert Report viewers are sponsoring the U.S. Olympic speed skating team for the 2010 Winter Olympics, why are Shani Davis and Apolo Anton Ohno, the team’s leading long and short track skaters, refusing to wear the Colbert Nation logo on their warmup gear? I see, Ohno; you’ll debase yourself by appearing on Dancing With the Stars, but you won’t wear a little C on your cap.
Colbert last week made a plea to his viewers to donate money to the team, which had just lost its funding when Dutch bank DSB, its sole sponsor, shut down. How much of the estimated $350,000 shortfall has Colbert Nation made up in a week?
(Video of Colbert’s followup report after the jump. Canada cheats!).

As of Monday night, $202,000.

“We are exuberant,” said Bob Crowley, the executive director of U.S. Speedskating. “The skaters are really pumped.”

Crowley first heard from the Colbert people Oct. 27. The next day, he was on a teleconference with Colbert. Sunday, Nov. 1, when he was at a World Series game in his native Philadelphia, Crowley got a call saying the Colbert Report wanted him on the Nov. 2 show. He was joined by 1994 Olympic speedskating champion Dan Jansen, who had run the New York Marathon the day before.

“We signed the deal that night,” Crowley said.

Since then, Crowley said the link to Colbert has prompted interest from several other potential sponsors.

Some skaters are wearing a mix of old warmup gear with the DSB logo and new racing gear with the Colbert Nation logo, but Ohno and Davis are the only ones to refuse to wear the red-white-and-blue C so far.
Expect Colbert to address that soon.

Ironic that a fake conservative pundit hits on a sure-fire promotion that has eluded real right-wing talkers such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.