“Faster, higher, stronger” may be the motto of the modern Olympic Games, but to portfolio managers across Asia, the shares associated with this summer's festival of sport have turned out to be sluggish, lower and weaker.

With just a few months until the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, a late burst of profit warnings, $120-per-barrel oil and a grim litany of ransacked share prices have stripped the sheen from China's basket of Olympic stocks.

Almost everything once tipped to soar in the run-up to the Games in Beijing this August - from major airlines and breweries to makers of television sets and sports clothes - have suffered heavy declines this year.

The overall market environment has been volatile and difficult - Shanghai and Hong Kong stocks have fallen this week, adding to sharp declines experienced since January. However, those Olympic stocks that were supposed to climb the highest have even managed to underperform their plunging benchmark indexes.

Fund managers say that even the depths plumbed by the names in the Olympic portfolio do not make them especially attractive as bargains: price- to-earnings ratios remain padded by their former heroic status and are still far above market averages.

Investors told The Times that the misery endured by the Olympic stocks was not altogether surprising, because even though retail investors were quick to back the Olympic story, many of the suggested names were never solid - prices rose too quickly and the hype was difficult to maintain. Controversy surrounding the Olympic torch run has not added to the appeal of the battered basket.

The concept of the Olympic stock basket took shape at a number of investment banks around this time last year.

With the one-year countdown to the games looming and the market mood still largely untroubled by the prospect of credit crunches and Wall Street banking failures, the idea of creating a large basket of shares linked by a colourful common theme was an Asian stockbroker's dream.

Salespeople bombarded their clients with suggested stock names: tourism service companies, such as China Travel, airlines, including China Air, and airport management companies, such as Beijing Capital, were firm favourites. Lists also included some of the big Chinese engineering, construction and building material companies set to benefit from the many Olympics-linked projects.

Other brokers tried a different tack, recommending stocks such as Skyworth Digital, TCL Multimedia or Tsingtao Breweries, which would gain from millions of people watching the games at home, or companies with huge Olympic sponsorship tie-ins, such as Lenovo.

A few houses, including CLSA and Macquarie, published formal research notes last June explaining which stocks had made it into the Olympic basket and why. CLSA offered a portfolio of nine Hong Kong-listed stocks and an argument that the Games were “a tide that lifts many boats”.

Macquarie's basket, which has been refined several times since its first appearance and whose creator, Tim Rocks, admitted that the direct market impact of the Games would be unpredictable, was larger and included a few non-Chinese names, such as Asics. The Japanese sportswear company's stock has dived 30 per cent this year.

For a while, the strategy worked superbly. Several of the names, such as Li Ning, the Hong Kong-listed sports goods maker, nearly doubled in value in the three months after they were tipped. However, since the beginning of the Olympic year itself, the baskets have all dramatically underperformed the wider market.

The Hang Seng composite index has fallen 8.17 per cent this year, while Beijing Capital Land and China National Building Materials - both darlings of the original CLSA portfolio - have shed 34 per cent and 39 per cent of their respective value since January 1.

Names in Macquarie's selection have fared poorly, too. Air China has tumbled by nearly 50 per cent this year in Hong Kong and even Tsingtao Breweries is down nearly 12 per cent.

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