WHAT is an Olympic medal worth?

 

Much depends on the profile of the athlete and the event he or she is competing in.

 

But if your name is Tom Daley, the answer could be a seven-figure sum.

 

“If Tom won a gold medal in Beijing, his potential earnings from sponsorship and other marketing/advertising appearances in the next 18 months could easily reach £1.5 million,” says Nigel Currie, director of sports marketing agency Brand Rapport.

 

“If he won a medal other than gold, he would still be highly marketable because of his potential for London 2012,” Currie adds.

 

In the absence of Zara Phillips, the horse-riding royal, Daley, the precociously talented 14-year-old diver from Plymouth in the English West Country, is the British human interest story of this month’s Beijing Games.

 

This, essentially, is because of his youth.

 

Although he and partner Blake Aldridge very easily could be among Britain’s first medallists of the 2008 Olympics when they compete in the men’s synchronised 10-metre platform diving event on August 11, Daley is not actually among the country’s brightest medal prospects - not this time anyway.

 

Mysterious alchemy

 

Nonetheless, the mysterious alchemy of sports marketing is in the process of inflating his promotional value to a level beyond all but at most a handful of his team-mates.

 

Currie asserts that he would still be “very marketable” even if he didn’t get a medal in Beijing, though he might have to wait longer to hit the seven-figure league.

 

Actually, the Tom Daley "industry" has been ticking along very nicely even prior to Beijing.

 

He was recently taken on by Professional Sports Group, a Surrey-based company that represents 17 of the Team GB athletes in Beijing.

 

As of May 21, his 14th birthday, a Tom Daley website – www.tom-daley.org – has been up and running.

 

This includes what purports to be The Secret Diary of Tom Daley, although I see that it also states it is, “in no way affiliated with Tom Daley or his friends or family”.

 

And his existing corporate sponsors include a German-owned workshop and in-vehicle storage manufacturer whose chief executive is Clive Woodward.

 

OK, not the Clive Woodward, but forgive the journalistic licence.

 

As product marketing manager Iain Paterson explained to me on the phone, the prime motivation for teaming up with Daley was local interest: the company Bott Limited’s UK headquarters is in Bude, not very far from Plymouth.

 

Bott’s eclectic batch of sports sponsorships, meanwhile, also includes Team KTM, an Austrian moto-cross team, and Clyde FC, the Scottish football club.

 

I have been able to identify five Tom Daley sponsors in all.

 

Adidas and Visa will need no introduction.

 

Daley to bring peer pressure to dining hall

 

Sodexo is described on FT.com as “the French contract caterer”.

 

As a leading provider of food and management services in the UK education sector, it is easy to appreciate why an association with a well-known schoolboy-athlete might appeal to the company.

 

Says Phil Hooper, Sodexo’s corporate affairs director: “We believe that our link with Tom helps us to encourage children to think about what they eat and the lifestyle that they adopt.

 

”Sodexo’s link-up with Tom is a very effective way of communicating with children in secondary schools, who are often more receptive to advice from peers rather than from parents and teachers.”

 

Finally, ABS London is, I am told, a building services company run by Tom’s uncle, which has been sponsoring the diving prodigy for more than two years.

 

So far, I have to say, the extra commercial pressures which these deals will subject him to strike me as perfectly manageable – even for a 14 year old.

 

If they enable his family to live a little more comfortably while continuing to accompany him to diving events around the world, then their positive contribution to Team Daley probably outweighs the potentially disruptive effect of the time his sponsors will expect him to spend helping them to drive up their sales and profit margins.

 

For now, the debate seems to be over whether young Tom will be earning more than his teachers by the time the new academic year rolls around in September, rather than how many Lamborghinis he has stashed in his garage.

 

Sense of proportion

 

But I do hope, if and when the stampede of corporations beating their path to his door begins in earnest, that Daley’s advisers manage to retain a sense of proportion.

 

Yes, it will be tempting to cash in to the max while the opportunity is there since, as elite athletes appreciate better than most of us, you never know what lies around the corner.

 

The bottom-line, though, is that success, in most cases, is the commodity big-spending companies want to tap into.

 

If the championships and medals fail to materialise, then it won’t be too long before they turn their attention elsewhere – even if the prospect of London 2012 persuades them to be a little more patient than might otherwise be the case.

 

It follows that it is absolutely vital - for Daley’s long-term earning potential, let alone anything else - not to compromise on training time to make room for all the additional commitments.

 

And, frankly, you don’t have to go to work in a mortarboard to believe that what remains of his education shouldn’t be compromised with or neglected either – however well-rounded a personality he already appears.

 

Right now, this remarkably composed Devon teenager looks to have an outstanding chance of being the first British Olympic diver in history to become seriously rich.

 

He has an outstanding chance too, one day, of winning Olympic gold.

 

It would be a great pity if an avalanche of commitments entered into in response to a first flush of success in front of the world’s TV cameras in the Beijing Water Cube, ended up putting his longer-term interests in jeopardy.

 

David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing.