KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — Bruno Banani is a German men’s underwear company. The brand, which features styles with colorful names like Booty Bass, Rusty Iron and Blockbuster (it can come as a G-string), is well known in Europe for its unusual marketing campaigns. The company has sent its garments underwater to the Bermuda Triangle, and in 1998, Russian astronauts wore the underwear aboard a space station.

Bruno Banani is also an Olympic luger from Tonga. Surprisingly, this matching of names is not a coincidence: Banani (the racing luger) and Banani (the racy underwear) have combined to create a situation at the Sochi Games that is a uniquely Olympic blend of underdog inspiration crossed with strident capitalism.

The back story, at least the nonunderwear part of it, sounds like something out of a movie. A Polynesian who does not even know what luge is and has never lived a day in his life with a temperature colder than 60 degrees hears a radio advertisement announcing a national search for Tonga’s first winter Olympian. He shows up for the tryout, wows the panel and goes on to make history. It is a one-man version of the Jamaican bobsled team and the film “Cool Runnings,” but for luge.

The rest of the tale, though, is where it turns bizarre. Makai, a global company that highlights its “experiential marketing,” coordinated the search for a winter athlete in 2008 because one of its executives had a connection with the Tongan royal family. Princess Salote Mafile’o Pilolevu Tuita wanted to see an athlete from her country compete at the Winter Games.