Jonah Lomu’s

Sports

Jonah Lomu’s BIG deal

By Atama Raganivatu

Jonah Lomu, already the world’s most famous Tongan, is well on the way to also becoming the richest, following a deal he has just signed with British sports wear manufacturer Reebok.

The full details of Lomu’s four-year contract with the company have not been disclosed, however, he is believed to have been guaranteed several million US dol lars for spearheading a high-powered

international marketing campaign which

will involve him appearing in television commercials throughout the world.

The deal represents a major coup for Reebok, as it endeavours to gain an edge over arch rivals Nike, Adidas, and Puma in the Asian and North American markets.

Lomu now transcends rugby union.

Although the sport has a very small fol lowing in the United States, he was named amongst the top 10 sports performers of 1995 by that country’s leading news mag azine, Time. In Asia, participation in rugby extends little beyond South Korean and Japanese college students and Hong Kong’s expatriate community, yet clips of him rampaging through would-be tacklers

are regularly shown on television sets all over the continent.

It is not only Lomu’s athletic ability which makes him such an attractive propo sition to Reebok. A devout Christian, he is shy, charmingly modest and affable. Most

importantly, his personal life is exemplary.

At a time when the contemporary world’s best known soccer player is a self confessed drug addict; the biggest name in modern boxing a convicted rapist; American football’s most lionised person ality, at the very least, a wife beater; and the greatest natural talent in golf today an

alcoholic, universally acclaimed sporting role models are in short supply. Reebok, therefore, must be delighted to have secured Lomu’s presence at the vanguard of their biggest-ever promotion campaign.

Reebok’s credibility has been enhanced by their association with Lomu, for he is selective about the products he endorses.

Several potentially lucrative advertising opportunities had previously been spumed because they required the promotion of items he disliked. Another idea for a tele vision commercial was rejected because it

66 Lomu now transcends

rugby

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featured footage of England fullback Mike Catt being trampled by a one-man stam pede during last year’s World Cup semi final. That would have been too embar rassing for Catt, Lomu decided.

However, he has no qualms about appearing in advertisements in which he is subjected to a little discomfiture. One, on British television, shows him being dispos sessed of a pizza pie by the diminutive Malaysian mother of England wingers Rory and Tony Underwood and left, due to the ferocity of her fend, stunned on the floor.

In New Zealand, Lomu has made very few advertisements. But, his mother, Hepi, father Semisi and brothers Sione and Talanoa regularly appear in an amusing cheese commercial on Kiwi television.

Hepi, a good-natured, matronly, arche typal Tongan matriarch, was seven months pregnant with Jonah when she and Semisi flew to Auckland from Nukualofa in 1975 seeking a better life for themselves. One can easily imagine her response if told the baby she then carried would, 21 years later, earn a fortune for extolling the virtues of sportswear! ■

Lomu...on his way to becoming the richest Tongan