By Bruce Horovitz
USA Today

The Jamaican bobsled team has signed with CoActive Marketing Group's division in Lincoln Heights. The team aims to be a formidable contender. (Photo provided)

The Olympic torch is out in Athens. But it's still flickering in Jamaica.

Yes, Jamaica.

A group of savvy Cincinnati-based marketers already is trying to re-ignite Olympic spirit for the one Winter Olympics team whose very name still makes people smile: the Jamaican bobsled team.

It's getting by on a shoestring right now and is still looking for new sponsorship.

But the underdogs of the 1988 Winter Olympics - whose unlikely winter sports connection became fodder for Cool Runnings, the hit Disney feature movie - are revamping their image in a new bid for endorsement gold.

The team just signed on with a heavyweight U.S. promotion specialist - CoActive Marketing Group's division in Lincoln Heights - and with XP Apparel, the same apparel giant that has a license to make clothing for some of the most popular U.S. Olympic teams.

There's more. Coming soon under a Christmas tree near you: Jamaican Bobsled Team sleds.

Also on its way to market: Jamaican Bobsled Team underwear.

"A brand is really an emotional connection," says Dudley Stokes, president of the Jamaican Bobsleigh Federation and driver of the 1988 team whose hopes ended with a terrible crash. "There is an emotional connection between people and the Jamaican bobsled team."

But unlike 1988, the team has genuine talent.

In Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994, the Jamaicans stunned the world when the four-man team placed 14th.

There's even ambitious talk that by the Vancouver Games in 2010, the team could be a medal hopeful.

"The dream is not ended, and the story is not over," says Anders Vestergaard, the team's agent and a former bobsledder for the Virgin Islands bobsled team. "The dream ends with a medal."

The search for sponsors

To help finance getting to that level, the team is trying to raise $1 million for a new sled, to improve its training equipment and to hire a world-class bobsled coach.

Just one thing's missing: sponsors to write the check. No one has replaced Red Stripe Beer, the national beer of Jamaica, which dropped the team almost a decade ago.

This time around, the team is seeking major American sponsors.

Finding such sponsors is the mandate given to Rod Taylor, senior vice president of promotion and sports marketing for CoActive in Cincinnati. Taylor got a call from Vestergaard in mid-July after he wrote a column in Promo magazine about Olympics marketing.

CoActive has worked with Hall of Fame and Major League baseball players, Nascar and U.S. soccer players, including the Fab Five on the U.S. women's Olympic team.

Vestergaard asked Taylor to help the Jamaicans find a U.S. sponsor to give them $1 million. Taylor told them to think smaller - half a dozen U.S. sponsors to give smaller amounts.

Several large Cincinnati corporations are on the prospect list.

"We want to form long-lasting relationships," Taylor says.

More marketing

The team is working to go hip - and push its abilities instead of its foibles.

Its logo is being redesigned, as is its Web site. A team CD with reggae music is in the works. The team has talked with production companies interested in filming a documentary about its bid for a medal.

"We are not selling 'cute' at all," Taylor says.

"This is America's second-favorite team," Taylor says. "They are the universal feel-good story."

Enquirer staff contributed.