Olympic gold medal recognized worldwide

The Olympic Gold medal that Nebraska corn spokesman, Curt Tomasevicz, carries with him is truly an iconic, international language that any person we've encountered in Japan on the corn-fed beef mission can recognize.

On Sunday, the team travelled to a Kawasaki City elementary school where we partnered with Lawson Convenience Stores - the second largest convenience store chain in Japan - to meet with a girls soccer team and distribute U.S. beef "bento boxes" or beef and rice microwavable lunches, to the girls. The girls team comprised of 7-10 year olds, were aware that our team was coming, but they were most excited about meeting Curt, the Olympic Gold Medalist.

Most girls were shy at first, but had prepared questions in English to ask Curt about the Olympics, his favorite food, and why he was in Japan. It was a great opportunity for Curt to share to the young athletes about staying healthy and eating right, as well as the reason for being in Japan - to promote U.S. beef and that U.S. beef is fed with high-quality U.S. corn grown by farmers like John Willoughby and Bill Schuster.

The team then shared their lunch time with our team and wanted to play soccer with Curt.

It has been such a unique experience having Curt travel with our team because we don't have to speak Japanese for people to understand and respect an Olympian. And thus, people then trust U.S. farmers and ranchers because of Curt's role in representing them.