Kate Grace, 27, won the 800 at the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials. She is sponsored by Oiselle, a private running apparel company. (Getty Images)

Kate Grace peered up into the crowd. As she waltzed around the track at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., she scanned the over 20,000 fans in attendance for her friends and family. When she found them, a tear trickled down her face.

This was Grace’s victory lap. She had just qualified for the 2016 Olympics by winning the women’s 800-meter final at the U.S. Track & Field Trials. The 27-year-old held a water bottle and an American flag in her left hand, and a stuffed animal in her right. Sun flooded down on her. Cameras snapped.

Naturally, many of the photos they snapped ended up on social media and online. They popped up on Grace’s Instagram page, and all over Facebook.

And, crucially, they were unleashed on the various accounts and website of Oiselle, the women’s running apparel company that has sponsored Grace and her Olympic bid since 2012.

That was Monday.

On Tuesday, an email appeared in Oiselle CEO Sally Bergesen’s inbox. It was from a U.S. Olympic Committee representative. “Please act expeditiously to remove all Olympic themed information from all Oiselle promotional materials, which includes but is not limited to social media, web site, catalog and printed materials, press releases and congratulatory advertisements,” it read.

Oiselle, in its extensive coverage of the Trials, had violated the USOC’s brand usage guidelines, which prohibit companies that aren’t official USOC partners from using any Team USA or Olympic-related logos, and a long list of trademarked phrases. That list includes “Olympic,” “Olympian” and “Team USA,” but also includes “Road to Rio,” “Go for the Gold,” “Let the games begin,” and many more.

These slogans and logos were plastered all over Hayward Field, and on the bib that all athletes must wear during competition, making permissible photo usage all but impossible. That frustrated Bergesen.

“[Olympic qualification is] really the moment that the athlete and the athlete’s sponsor have been investing in for four years,” Bergesen told Yahoo Sports. “And then it’s at this point that we’re told that we can no longer acknowledge the athletes’ accomplishments.”

This all might sound ridiculous — or “overly strict,” as Bergesen puts it. It certainly frustrated Grace’s boyfriend, Patrick O’Neil, who, in a five-paragraph Facebook post, implored readers to “SHARE this post to make people aware of the behind the scenes bullying that Team USA does to the athletes chasing their dreams and the people and companies that are there for them during the years of training when no one else is.”



Bergesen and others claim that the USOC is “overreaching.” Bergesen consulted with lawyers on Wednesday to consider the prospect of challenging the USOC’s restrictions, though she admits that doing so would be “signing up for years and years and years of litigation.”

In a statement to Yahoo Sports, USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said: “This is standard marks protection and made in effort to preserve the value of the Olympic brand for official partners. The marks and terminology associated with the Rio Games and the U.S. Olympic Team Trials are reserved for official Team USA partners, whose generous support funds the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams.”

Some of the images in Oiselle’s social media posts hadn’t been taken down by Friday morning. The company has started to comply with the USOC’s request in more recent posts, though, altering photos to remove Olympic logos, and referring to the Olympics as “the Big Event in the Southern Hemisphere.” The company has also directed followers to the accounts of employees and athletes, who are permitted to post without restriction.

Other companies, meanwhile, accept the restrictions, and find creative ways to circumnavigate them. Under Armour, which sponsors Michael Phelps and isn’t the official USOC partner (Nike is), sent out this tweet after Phelps’ final race at the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials:

It was @MichaelPhelps' last race on home turf tonight, but there's more to come this summer. #RuleYourself #IWILL ???????? pic.twitter.com/xNiMfZGXN4 — Under Armour (@UnderArmour) July 3, 2016





Other large brands like Adidas and New Balance, create similar, necessarily ambiguous marketing campaigns that, when timed right, promote their athletes and their accomplishments without explicitly referencing the Olympics.

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