Word: racquets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...tour. In fact, I discovered that my frantic desire not to fail outweighed all the practice swings and wind sprints. I choked more often than my peers and rarely rose to the occasion when facing a superior. Finding little solace in the chilly locker rooms of indoor racquet clubs, I returned to the easy glory of high school competition and old men's doubles...
When not cradling a violin or wielding a tennis racquet, Stern can usually be found holding a telephone or two or three. (He has eleven of them in his Manhattan duplex.) If forced to spend a couple of hours at an airport, he finds a lounge or booth and places one long-distance call after another to his many friends, who range from a Who's Who of the concert world to Henry Kissinger, Dinah Shore, Arthur Miller and Jimmy Connors. Members of the Israel Philharmonic like to tease him about the three-minute orchestral introduction in the Beethoven...
Borg will also make an additional $3 million or more this year that does not involve lifting a racquet. He has lent his name to almost 60 products. Among them: tennis shoes, training devices, racquet-stringing machines, instructional video and audio cassettes, balls, ball machines and headbands. Other firms line Borg's pockets for promoting breakfast cereal, bread, soft drinks, leisure shoes and clothes, sunglasses, tanning lotion, key rings, pencils, erasers, posters, calendars, confections (a Borg candy bar is sold in Europe), blue jeans, jewelry, glucose tablets, men's cologne, liquor (in Brazil) and a Bjorn Borg doll...
Along with the reported $60,000 Scandinavia's SAS Airlines paid him last year for wearing their logo on his sleeve, came free first-class air passage on SAS for him and discount fares for his parents. Donnay racquets of Belgium, which is paying him around $600,000 a year plus a commission on each Borg model racquet sold, also must provide the star with the 30 or so $75 racquets he takes with him to tournaments. In Australia, he endorses Bancroft racquets for another $90,000 or so a year and all the racquets he can break. Fila...
...firms pay so much for a Borg endorsement? Fila's sales climbed from $25 million to $53 million during the last three years of Borg's first contract. Donnay's racquet sales quadrupled in its first five years with Borg. Didier Ailloud, deputy sales director of the French firm that makes VS strings, believes that as much as 15% of new customers come his way after being swayed by the Swede. Says Ailloud: "I am convinced that the identification of Bjorn with our product is of inestimable importance...