Whether you like it or not, Usain “Lightning” Bolt is the face of the London Olympics.
In the coming weeks, the world's fastest man will aim to break multiple records, while taking a whirlwind of cool gear along with him on the journey.
Today's athlete is technologically savvy and brand orientated— Bolt is no different. He owns every kind of Apple device known to man, plays video games on the regular and has tons of Twitter followers and subscribers on Facebook.
Bolt first popped onto the global scene as a 21-year-old at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he went on to shatter the 100M dash in 9.69 seconds and also won the 200M and the 4x100M relay, making him the first athlete to set three world sprinting records in the same Olympics since the great Carl Lewis did it back in 1984.
Following in Lewis' footsteps, Bolt will be looking to defend his records in this year's Games, something he’s hoping to do in style.
As one can imagine, his exceptional performance on the track, his increased his popularity off it significantly. The Jamaican sprinter endorses everything from Hublot watches to Gatorade. Naturally, all of Bolt’s endorsers will be looking to cash in if and when he snags gold in London. The most notable of his endorsements is with Puma. Bolt rocked the Puma Complete Theseus II in a gold colorway when he broke the records in Beijing, and he will looking to replicate that success in 2012, this time in the Puma EvoSpeed.
In addition to being featured on numerous ads and magazine covers, Bolt even has a new mobile game app called, well, Bolt! The mobile game that features the star running from treacherous Caribbean pirates was an instant hit with fans. In fact, just two days after its release, the game became the No. 1 app in Jamaica and the No. 5 app in the UK, clearly showing his worldwide appeal.
[Mashable]
