When five-time Olympic medalist and “Dancing with the Stars” winner Apolo Ohno sat down with his dad and his advisers early this year to sort out potential sponsors, they considered dozens of companies.

“We tossed a lot of companies at the wall,” said speed skater and Seattle-area native Ohno. “We asked what products do I use, what companies would I feel comfortable working with. We wanted the right fit,” Ohno said Tuesday.

One of those companies was SeaTac’s Alaska Airlines. Ohno and the airline created a partnership: Ohno allows the use of his name and image to promote the airline, and the airline pays him an unspecified sponsorship fee in return. Some of the results of that partnership agreement came to life Tuesday morning at Sea-Tac Airport’s Gate C-9.

There Alaska Airlines rolled out a Boeing 737-800 airliner decorated with an image of Ohno in full speed-skating gear on the plane’s fuselage. The airliner is the largest result of the symbiotic alliance that the speed skater and the airline have created.

Ohno spoke at an airport news conference and fielded questions from journalists, the public and a skating team from his former Federal Way rink.

“When I was growing up in the Seattle area,” Ohno said, “I never thought I would see something like this,” gesturing toward his image on the airliner’s fuselage. “It feels very surreal,” he said before he autographed the aircraft in foot-high cursive.

Such alliances have become commonplace in athletics, but for Alaska the arrangement was new.

“We’ve never done deals with athletes or celebrities before,” said Greg Latimer, Alaska’s managing director of brand, product and loyalty marketing.

The airline’s advertising agency, Seattle-based Wongdoody, approached the airline last spring with the Ohno partnership deal. Michael Hoffman, Wongdoody senior director, was a friend of Ohno and his family. The ad agency told the airline they saw an Alaska-Ohno deal as a good fit particularly considering the proximity of the winter Olympics in Vancouver and the common hometown of Ohno and the airline.

Latimer said the arrangement worked on several levels.

“We don’t think we could have found anyone who better captured our company work ethics, our company pride, with his positive energy and his training regimen,” said Latimer. That training routine often includes 12 hours a day of skating, technical work, and strength and flexibility training.

The airline’s 9,000 employees, he said, wanted to celebrate the company’s connections to the games and to the Northwest while helping a local hero with his effort to win gold.

The airline, the smallest of the nation’s six legacy network carriers, couldn’t afford to become an Olympic sponsor. Besides, United Airlines had secured that sponsorship.

But sponsoring an individual athlete was more doable, Latimer said.

The airline is scrupulously avoiding trespassing into Olympics territory. The airline’s news releases and speeches have carefully avoided using the O word. The signs promoting Ohno talk about following Apolo or the 2010 Vancouver Games, but not the Olympics.

“We’re very respectful of the IOC’s rules,” Latimer said.

The Olympic committee, which licenses use of its name to raise funds for the games, has become notorious in Western Washington for warning local businesses with “Olympic” or derivatives of that name that the committee owns the name. Many of those businesses adopted that name because of the proximity of the Olympic Mountains and Olympic National Park to their locale. Congressional legislation specifically exempts Western Washington businesses with long-established Olympic names.

Ohno’s father, Yuki, said sponsorships are a necessity for athletes to continue competing.

“He’s not like a professional athlete who has a multi-million-dollar contract with a team,” said the elder Ohno, a Seattle hair salon owner. “He has to have sponsorships to pay the bills.”

In addition to the aircraft decorated with Ohno’s image, the airline has created a Web site, followapolo.com, to give fans an insider view of the skater’s life.

Latimer said the airline will be rolling out new videos over the next several weeks that show Ohno’s life, training and competition regimen.

That regimen begins again today after Ohno returns to Salt Lake City where the Olympic speed skating team is training for the Olympic competition.

“That training is what my life is about for the next couple of months,” said Ohno.

John Gillie: 253-597-8663

john.gillie@thenewstribune.com