Yamaguchi's name may not be a big seller

U.S. figure skating champion Kristi Yamaguchi won a spot on a cereal box but has signed no new commercial deals since winning a gold medal last month in one of the Winter Olympics' most prestigious events.

The absence of endorsement deals has led to speculation that advertisers are wary of the young Californian because of her Japanese name and heritage and are worried about getting caught in a U.S.-Japan economic cross fire.

But her agent says that advertisers have expressed considerable interest in Yamaguchi, a fourth-generation American, and that he has a "substantial number" of offers to present to her next month.

He said he has talked to about 200 advertisers and agencies and has heard no complaints about her ethnic background.

She hasn't signed any deals yet, agent Kevin Albrecht said, because she is in training for the World Figure Skating Championships set, for March in Oakland, Calif. He said she has postponed considering endorsement opportunities until after those events.

But some talent brokers are skeptical of those claims.

They say agents typically say they have deals in the works to drum up interest in their clients. Besides, talent brokers say, advertisers wouldn't acknowledge misgivings if they were concerned about an endorser's connection to Japan.

David Burns, who heads a service in Chicago that matches athletes and advertisers, hasn't had an inquiry about Yamaguchi since her Olympic win.

"Right now there is a negative connected with anything Japanese," he said. "It's wrong, wrong, wrong, but that is the way it is."

Other talent brokers said too little time has passed since her victory to say whether the skater is losing endorsements because of her ancestry.

They say the Winter Olympics generally aren't as popular with Americans as the Summer Games. With the Summer Games coming up, advertisers are under little pressure to sign a winter sport athlete.

Marty Blackman, a sports celebrity negotiator in New York, said Yamaguchi's Japanese heritage "may be a factor, but it is only a small factor compared to other reasons" that she has signed no new endorsement deals.

Olympians often are seen only during the Olympics, he said, and advertisers generally like to sign deals with athletes whose accomplishments are in the public view more frequently.

Kellogg Co., which used Yamaguchi's photo on a Special K cereal box last fall, planned to put her on boxes distributed near her home in northern California after her gold medal victory. But the company decided to make the commemorative box available nationally because of demand from consumers and retailers who heard about the promotion.