BEAVERTON, Ore. — If you sit on the bus bench while waiting for the No. 52 at the corner of SW Murray Boulevard and Farmington Road, you will have one of the best U.S. athletes headed for the 2012 Summer Olympics as company.
Oh, Mariel Zagunis almost certainly won't be there in person. And if she were, you almost certainly wouldn't recognize her. But her picture is on the bench, framed by the word "UNBEATABLE," although her name is nearly invisible, in a script smaller than the words "PAID ADVERTISEMENT" above it.
And yet who would have expected a champion in an obscure sport to have her name and face in Frontier Communications' print, TV and bus bench advertising campaign, to have been on a TD Ameritrade billboard in Times Square, to be part of Deloitte's campus road show?
"This is the icing on the icing on the cake," Zagunis said of her sponsorships, the sweet aftertaste from the second saber fencing gold medal she won at Beijing in 2008...
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