OIympic stars test the waters of reality TV

By Meredith Blake

Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK

Last weekend, Ryan Lochte celebrated his five Olympic medals the way any red-blooded American male would do: by heading to Las Vegas, slipping into a tiny, star-spangled hot-pink Speedo, and partying alongside Britain’s Prince Harry.

Lochte’s Sin City revelry capped off a week-long promotional blitz by the swimmer and aspiring actor, including a cameo on the CW soap “90210,” a stroll down the red carpet at the premiere of “The Expendables 2,” a striptease performance for Giuliana Rancic and Joan Rivers on E!’s “Fashion Police” and a visit to “The Tonight Show,” where he reiterated his desire to appear on “The Bachelor” or “Dancing With the Stars.”

Lochte may be courting the limelight more unabashedly than other members of Team USA, but he’s certainly not the only athlete turning to the mechanisms of Hollywood — and reality television in particular — to parlay a moment of Olympic glory into a lucrative showbiz career.

In recent years, Olympians have flocked to reality TV like moths to a flame: To date, more than a dozen former and current Olympians have appeared on “Dancing With the Stars,” and two of them — gymnast Shawn Johnson and speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno — will return to the show’s all-star season next month.

Last week, gymnast Gabby Douglas paid a visit to “America’s Got Talent” and Lochte’s archrival, Michael Phelps, announced plans for a reality series on the Golf Channel. Then there’s the guy who arguably started it all: Olympic decathlete Bruce Jenner, better known to a generation of TV viewers as Kim Kardashian’s stepdad than “the World’s Greatest Athlete.”

For an increasingly image-savvy generation of athletes, a career in television — particularly reality television — has become at least as appealing as an appearance on the front of a Wheaties box. The driving force behind this trend, say former Olympians and sports marketing experts, is the desire — and in many cases, the financial necessity — to extend their time in the spotlight. If it takes endless heart-to-heart conversations with Chris Harrison or getting slapped by Maksim Chmerkovskiy to make that happen, then so be it.

“What you’re seeing a lot more of is athletes looking to the future and figuring out what will help them outlast a career in sports,” says Lochte’s agent, Erika Wright.

Most Olympians, even groundbreakers like Douglas, have a narrow window of opportunity — a few months, tops — to cash in on their gold medals.

“As much as we’d like to believe that performing well in the Olympics and being the darling of your country means you’re going to have a long shelf life, it’s just naive,” claims Matt Delzell, an executive at the Marketing Arm, an agency that brokers celebrity endorsements.