Nike to Xiang: Just Don’t Do IT!

I read a fantastic post last week by Chris Matyszczyk. Now, Chris isn’t just known for having every consonant in the alphabet in his last name, but also as a great writer over at CNET. His post titled;

“Nike asks Chinese government to identify Yahoo blogger”

Made me do a double take 3 times. I kept saying to myself there is no way he got this right. It HAS to be Chinese government asks Nike to identify blah blah blah, not the other way around. But low and behold, read the story and it seems as if Nike taking lessons from the Chinese on how to deal with dissidents.

The back-story goes like this. Rumors are flying that Nike asked Liu Xiang, who is a 110-meter hurdler to withdraw from one of the heats during the Olympics because he was going to get smoked and Nike didn’t want their name anywhere near this drubbing.

So Xiang mailed it in claiming he had a bum ankle. I know what you are asking yourself, where the hell is the business story? Here comes. Someone posted on Yahoo that Nike was involved in Xiang’s withdraw from the race, which in turn sent Nike on a witch hunt by asking the Chinese to assist in smoking out the offender.

To that I say to Nike WTF? Are you guys out of your minds? If this is true what are you people doing up there in Oregon? Are you too close to the Russian border that you have adopted some of their attitudes towards free speech? Did ya get all amped up over the tanks rolling into Georgia and thought how good they would look with the swoosh on their uniforms?

Ah Phil, you might want to check in here to see what is going on. This may work on some poor Chinese kid who is used to being suppressed, but I’d like to see you tell Tiger to man up and take one for the Nike team. He would be telling you to eff off faster than Adidas could send the corporate G5 to Orlando.