Updated Feb. 21, 2014 1:27 p.m. ET
SOCHI, Russia—U.S. Speedskating and Under Armour Inc. UA +5.21% Under Armour Inc. Cl A U.S.: NYSE $112.77 +5.58 +5.21% Feb. 21, 2014 2:12 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 2.06M P/E Ratio 73.61 Market Cap $11.32 Billion Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee $395,263 02/21/14 U.S. Speedskating Renews Under... 02/18/14 Sochi Olympics: How a Big Bet ... 02/16/14 U.S. Speedskating Team's Sochi... More quote details and news » announced on Friday that they have renewed their partnership through the 2022 Olympic Games, fusing the two closer together on the heels of a public flap over new Under Armour skinsuits that divided the team and underpinned its disastrous Sochi Games.
Under Armour chief executive Kevin Plank "is a proud American and they will not retreat from supporting USS despite the challenges we've gone through together," U.S. Speedskating executive director Ted Morris said in an email to athletes, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Controversial new Under Armour skin suits played a major role in the unraveling of the U.S. team at Sochi, where American skaters failed to win an Olympic medal for the first time since the 1984 Games. Speedskating officials said Friday they worried that the performance would end the relationship with Under Armour.
"We were not that optimistic, to be honest," Morris said. "When you look at how things transpired, it's tough to imagine any company saying, 'We want to stick with these guys.' From our standpoint, that was hard to fathom."
A spokeswoman for Under Armour confirmed the deal, but the terms weren't immediately known Friday. The company declined to make chief executive Kevin Plank immediately available for comment.
The team arrived in Sochi with gold-medal favorites in several events. But after stars such as Shani Davis and Heather Richardson failed to even approach the podium, suspicion began to fall on a high-tech skinsuit developed specifically for these Games by Baltimore-based Under Armour. Several skaters believed that the suit, known as the Mach 39, had design flaws that were increasing drag and slowing them down.
Under Armour stood by the suits, yet the team elected to revert to a previous design, also manufactured by the company. The debate culminated in a series of tense meetings last Friday and a late-night appeal to skating and Olympic authorities to approve the switch.
But when results didn't improve, skaters said that the dispute and uncertainty within the squad had been too much of a distraction to perform at the highest level.
Under Armour, a popular maker of sports apparel and footwear with annual revenue of $2.3 billion, had targeted a partnership with U.S. Speedskating as a means of raising brand awareness and credibility overseas. Only 6% of its business is conducted outside North America, according to regulatory filings.
The company originally signed a contract with U.S. Speedskating in 2011 to last through the Sochi games. The renewal will carry them through the 2022 Games, the location of which hasn't yet been decided.
"It's a nice gesture from Under Armour," Davis said. "Clearly, they can put a lot of time, money and energy into other things, but they're choosing speedskating."
The company also has contracts with the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation and USA Gymnastics, as well as the Canadian snowboarding team. Under Armour has a number of endorsement deals with college athletic programs, including Auburn University, the University of Maryland and Notre Dame, as well as individual marketing contracts with the likes of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps.
Endorsement deals of Olympic sports teams typically don't translate directly into revenue gains, but are considered a low-cost play for global brand exposure.
The signing of the deal should take some pressure off the U.S. Speedskating federation, which in recent years has been hoping to improve and diversify its funding, the majority of which comes from the U.S. Olympic Committee.
USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun issued a statement on Tuesday, saying that while the organization is disappointed in the dearth of speedskating medals, "we will leave no stone unturned when we analyze Sochi results, [and] based on current information, we do not believe the suits were the problem."
Shares of Under Armour were up 5.68% to $113.28 in early afternoon trading. The stock took a 2.38% hit on Feb. 14, when news of the suit change was initially reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Both the company and U.S. Speedskating have gone on the defensive in recent days. Officials at the sports federation disseminated at least two emails offering "talking points" to athletes. Those emails, reviewed by the Journal, urged the skaters to emphasize the positive aspects of the relationship between the team and Under Armour when speaking with media.
The company, for its part, has denied that the Mach 39 skin suits inhibited performance, suggesting other factors may have played a role in the team's medal-less appearance in Sochi.
Morris, the federation's executive director, didn't know what the long-term plan was for the Mach 39s after the Olympics. The schedule still includes two World Cup events and the World Allround Championships in Germany and the Netherlands next month. Skater Brittany Bowe said she assumed they would continue wearing the older models for the rest of the season.
The team still had an outside shot at a medal going into Friday's competition, but a disastrous team pursuit for the men ensured they would finish in the bottom two. The women's team-pursuit squad also lost its heat, but posted a time that guarantees it will finish no worse than sixth when competition concludes on Saturday. That will stand as the best U.S. speedskating result at these Games, since none of the other events saw an American finish above seventh place.
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that," skater Jilleane Rookard said.
Throughout the Olympics, the U.S. team speculated that their underperformance might also be tied to other factors, from ice conditions to pre-Games training decisions. And as the team evaluates what went wrong, Davis said, nothing can be counted out.
"We have to destroy and rebuild," Davis said. "We have to start from ground zero and build up again if we're going to continue on to 2018."
Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com and Sara Germano at sara.germano@wsj.com
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