BREAKING: Colleen Quigley Offically Signs With Lululemon

Good for her! A huge pay raise without having to deal with Nike's bull**** and power mongering. My hope is that she becomes the Curt Flood of running and breaks the shoe company stranglehold on sponsorships.

Open the floodgates! New sponsors, new commercial tie ins, and new money are needed to grow the sport and to insure that athletes get paid.

I wanted to buy men's shorts there on Sunday. They look comfortable, and you hear good things about their quality (from women)... The men's shorts feel terrible. They all have those built in compression shorts that go all the way down to where the shorts end. Why wear shorts AND compression shorts??? It felt terrible. Envision the girl's midlength spandex but with shorts on top of that.

Meh yeah but what about her shoes tho? And what kind of kit will she be wearing in her races?

judith wrote:

Meh yeah but what about her shoes tho? And what kind of kit will she be wearing in her races?

How about a Lulumon kit and whatever shoes she wants?

She can train in whatever works best for her and wear the cheater shoes.

She should be become a letsrun VIP member for the shoe discount.

We like to only have 1 thread per topic. As a result, we are closing the other thread asking about what her new sponsor was as it's like 15 pages long. It's better to have a new thread on reaction to her new deal. Here are the posts from that thread about the new deal.

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Here is the old thread.

judith wrote:

Meh yeah but what about her shoes tho? And what kind of kit will she be wearing in her races?

In the citius podcast she said she's making three times as much as she did previously so she will be able to afford shoes and a kit

they definitely threw her a big bag so she probably won’t truly have to rock w a shoe company. She can wear whatever she wants most likely

A few thoughts here.

1) I'm glad she got a deal she's happy with. I like to see more sponsors in the sport particularly for someone who is a good runner but unlikely to ever medal at the global level.

2) What's happening here has happened time and time again. Nike pays for y outh and potential. They often offer 'ageing' trackster less than what they were getting before and they get insulted even though it's what they always do. But we saw it with Leo Manzano after his Olympic medal (he went to Hoka), Nick Symmonds (Brooks) ,Meb Keflezighi (Skechers) ,Allyson Felix, etc. Yes Colleen is only 28 but she is America's third best steepler. From a performance standpoint (not moedling/social media), it makes sense for Nike if you are trying to save bank during a pandemic to go after the likes of Nuguse/Hocker, etc.

3) Am I the only one who found her statement on her website to be well-written but kind of illogical if you actually think about it?

Don't get me wrong. I mean I liked the message. It starts by mentioning a bunch of negative things runners have been told over the years - "A runner should just run. A runner should look a certain way. " and then she says, "This runner does more than run."

Ok. That's great. But that's nothing really unique about Lululemon. The reality is Nike has spent a lot of money sponsoring Colin Kapernick and encouraged him to speak up as well as Caster Semenya - who doesn't look a certain way.

I'm just pointing it out as an observation. I mean it's not like I was expecting her to say, "I signed with them as they offered me 3 x times as much as Nike" as no one does that.

4) She needs to get more as she'll now have to pay a coach, pay for altitude camps,etc.

runderun wrote:

Just read the post on her website announcing the lululemon deal. At the end of the post, there's a great big Nike swoosh. She needs to fire her web guy

I noticed the big swoosh as well. Perhaps it's a mistake but is their a chance it's not a mistake?. I've never heard of Nike agreing to be a secondary sponsor but the reality is she's still going to be wearing their shoes so if she did have them giving her even free gear it would save her thousands a year as the new shoes are expensive.

What shoes will she wear?

It’s kinda odd she’s calling herself a lululemon ambassador since their ambassadors are largely unpaid influencers getting free swag… are we sure this massive sponsorship deal is true?

I’ll guarantee you it’s not 3x what her original Nike deal was. It may be 3x what Nike offered her to re-sign, which I’m sure was a reduction from her original deal. I’d guess her new deal might be somewhere around 150k a year.

Also, lulu hasn’t featured her prominently anywhere which is odd for such a seemingly large contract

After she doesn't make the Olympic team, she will be going full influencer. Someone said in another thread she's moving to LA according to her instagram live. Seems like shes setting herself up for the fitness influencer life.

And we've merged a third thread into this one. Trying to consolidate threads. Here are the posts about the signing from that one.

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She is smart to do this and those who were coming on here telling us that because she was wearing this brand on her instagram account or whatever meant she would sign with them were prescient. There is a lot of money in women's apparel in particular outside of shoes and someone like her can get that money. Nike is not being smart, in my opinion, because they still don't know apparel outside of shoes like these other companies. Just as they lost to something called L.A. Gear in the 1980s because they thought it was all about performance (not that their shoes were any good until the cheater shoes were allowed), when it was about style, they're losing $ to newer brands like this that have an eye on women's fashions. However, leaving Bowerman did not augur well for her running future. That was the best quality group for women in the country and very hard to replace that. I know that she is the third best steepler in the country, but you also have to recognize that she had been dropping her times down a lot before the pandemic and might well have been ready this year to drop under 9, given how far she's come and how well her teammates have been running.

zxcvzxcvc wrote:

Nike is not being smart, in my opinion, because they still don't know apparel outside of shoes like these other companies. Just as they lost to something called L.A. Gear in the 1980s because they thought it was all about performance (not that their shoes were any good until the cheater shoes were allowed), when it was about style, they're losing $ to newer brands like this that have an eye on women's fashions.

Nike lost to LA Gear? Where is LA Gear now?

[quote]zxcvzxcvc wrote:

and might well have been ready this year to drop under 9, given how far she's come and how well her teammates have been running.

You think she was going ot drop 10 seconds off her pb at age 28? No.

The reality is Nike pays elite performers. I think it would tarnish their brand to pay influencers. That's something adidas does right - pay rappers and what not? Does Nike do deals with celebs?

I am all for runners getting paid and making money!

Also, CQ is a legit runner. Her times are very impressive.