June 06, 2011 – Recently I wrote about the Norwegian Team’s golden jackets at Nordic World Championships in Oslo 2011 and heard from readers who clarified some interesting points about these jackets… read Marty’s initial The Way I See It on this topic HERE.

Those Norwegian Gold Jackets – the Norwegian Team jackets that members were given to walk around in, attend medal and formal presentations, and march in the opening and closing ceremonies was a nice “gold medal” color – did you notice? How was this gold color related to their national colors – red, white and blue? Nope, nada, no way Jose – me thinks they were sending a message – these are our podium jackets and we plan on making a lot of visits to the podium-14 in all for X-C. The next best was Sweden with 5. Psyche job #1 goes to NORWAY – another first – WOW!!

So, here is the whole story – a good friend, Jon Borstelmann, wrote to Swix and here is the way the “GOLD JACKETS” went down. Talk about imagination and competing for the whole ball of wax, and on top of that more the a quarter of million dollars to charity – grand slam all the way – way to go Norskis!!!

Swix Gold Down Jackets at the Nordic World Champs

Hi John,

This is true, Swix had these jackets made with only about six people knowing and got them to the Nordic World champs without anyone seeing them. As the athletes came across the finish line they had these jackets put on them as a surprise and from what I heard that was all they could talk about.

Then Swix told the athletes they were going to be auctioned off and 100% of the money was going to be donated to a charity of their choice. The cool thing is that Swix ended up making another run of these jackets for the athletes because they liked them so much.

I don’t have the list of the charities that the money was donated to but they did collect 1.2 million kroner which is about $225,000. Here is a link to info – it’s more about the race but it does mention the jackets being donated.

Thanks,

Aaron Phipps
Swix Sport USA, Inc.