That's Entertainment cont'd.

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Outside Magazine October 2001

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That's Entertainment cont'd.

By Mark Jenkins

"My parents were Christian missionaries in Africa," she explains. "I spent four years there. Now my dad owns Climb Time Indy, a climbing gym in Indianapolis, and my mom home- schools me and my brother, Clark.

"I train in the gym four times a week, four hours each time. I don't have a climbing coach. My dad's my belayer. I've never actually placed any pieces before, just clipped bolts. I also do weights and cardio, like kickboxing, three times a week.

"After college I want to open a kindergarten-preschool, an all-girls private school. And I want to be a spy and get married and have kids."

"Tori's first year climbing, she won the national championships in the junior division," says her father, Stephen Allen, 35, an ordained Southern Baptist minister. "Then she won the international championships. The next year she won both again. At 11 years old she said, 'I want to compete with adults.' She started getting phone calls from people wanting to make deals. I didn't want to make deals for Tori. I didn't want to negotiate contracts. I didn't want to be her agent. I'm her dad. I want to be her dad. That's why I contacted Todd."

"I see Tori really using her personality and her success in competition to springboard into some major marketing and sponsorship deals," says Todd Melloh, founder of Total Sports Marketing of Indianapolis, whose firm also represents NFL athletes, including Jason Belser and Adam Meadows. "Our whole mission is to connect the athlete to the fans. Every-body asks me why I got into extreme sports with Tori, but the fundamentals are the same for all sports: recognize what the athlete wants, recognize what the sponsor wants, find a happy marriage between the two.

"Tori's a magnificent kid. Her main drive and passion is to promote the sport of rock climbing. It's done wonders for her, and she knows it can do wonders for other little girls and boys. She can really be a role model for these kids. She can be a spokesperson for companies who are trying to hit that demographic. I mean, the younger generation, they're interested in things that you and I weren't ever interested in, and these are the same things that those major national sponsors want to cater to. A Mountain Dew, a Sprite, a Pepsi, a Coke. It's a natural fit."

"JUST VERY ROUGH, round numbers of course, but Tiger Woods could be making 80 million a year," says Paul Sunderland, 49, another NBC commentator at the Gorge Games, whose regular gig is the play-by-play for NBA broadcasts.

"Arnold Palmer's probably still making maybe 40. Michael Jordan, maybe 60 million. Look, the minimum salary for an NBA player is 347K. But remember, basketball is a mainstream sport. Millions and millions of Americans watch basketball on TV. Outdoor sports are not mainstream, and maybe they never will be."

THE GORGE GAMES last nine days. On the final evening of the competition, right before dusk, there is a dyno competition on the climbing wall. A large, good-natured crowd is rooting for their favorite climbers. NBC is filming. The climbers are competing for cash—hanging from a single hold, feet dangling, then suddenly flinging themselves straight up into the air and grasping the next hold.

When the announcer calls Tori Allen's name, she comes bounding out like Peter Pan and throws a handful of little red plastic monkeys to the crowd. A stuffed monkey dangles from her chalk bag. Before her next turn, she sprays the crowd with pink Silly String. On her last attempt, she again flings plastic monkeys into the audience, falls off, bounces back to her feet, and waves, just like Nadia Comaneci or Oksana Baiul.

Tori places third in the dyno contest.

After it's all over, after all the applause has ended and the cameras have stopped rolling, I find myself filing out of the arena behind a little girl, perhaps five years old, holding hands with her mom. She's talking to her mom, excitedly yet earnestly, about the climbing competition. In her free hand she grips a red plastic monkey and an autographed picture of Tori Allen.

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