Golden Kicks: The Shoes that Changed Sport

By Jason Coles and Stan Smith

Many iconic shoes, such as the adidas Stan Smith, Nike Air Jordan and Puma Suede are worn by millions as everyday footwear, but were originally born to bring victory on court, track and field.

Golden Kicks reveals the stories behind some of the greatest shoes in sporting history, the roles they played in sport's most significant moments, and how they have made the transition from classic sportswear to mainstream streetwear.

Discover the amazing stories behind the shoes, the people who made them, and the athletes who wore them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Sep 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781472937056

Jason Coles

Jason Coles has been in the sports industry his whole working life and has worked with some of the biggest brands, events and athletes in the business. He now runs his own content production company and is currently working on a documentary about the rival brothers who started Adidas and Puma. A self-confessed sneaker-head, Jason is a walking encyclopaedia of knowledge about the history of sports shoes (and is rarely seen out of his Adidas Superstars).

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A STAR IS BORN

1917 CONVERSE CREATE THE ALL STAR

CONVERSE ALL STAR

We start with the Granddaddy of them all and the sports shoe arguably most deserving of the title, ‘Greatest of All Time’. A shoe so iconic that it became more of a symbol for basketball than the ball itself; a shoe so universally acclaimed that at one point in its glorious history 60 per cent of Americans owned a pair. It is, of course, the Converse All Star, more affectionately known as ‘Chucks’ or ‘Connies’.

Founded in 1908 in Malden, Massachusetts, by Marquis Mills Converse, the Converse Rubber Company began life manufacturing waterproof overshoes. Being a seasonal product, the company couldn’t keep its workers busy all year round and so in 1915 it began making tennis shoes. With basketball steadily increasing in popularity, Converse developed a new shoe to meet the rising demand, and in 1917 the All Star was born.

Two things happened that were to ensure the shoe’s destiny. The first was the entry of the United States into the First World War. The US army needed fit young men and, in the belief that the coming battles would first be won on the sports fields, physical activity and participation in sports were encouraged, increasing the need for sports shoes. The second thing that put the All Star on its path to greatness was the arrival at Converse of Charles Hollis ‘Chuck’ Taylor.

Legend has it that in 1921 Taylor walked into the Converse office complaining of sore feet. He was an experienced journeyman basketball player who played for the Boston Celtics and for industrial league team, the Akron Firestone Non-Skids. His complaint was that the current version of the All Star hurt his feet. Recognizing that his playing experience could be beneficial to the product and that he was a natural salesman, Converse immediately hired him. He recommended a number of improvements including greater flexibility, and in 1934 became the first person to have his name added to a sports shoe when a heel patch he suggested was added to provide better ankle support. The iconic patch still bears his signature to this day. Taylor never received a commission, however, and remained simply a salaried employee of the company, although it is rumoured that he made full use of the company expense account.

Taylor toured the country as both salesman and ambassador. His white Cadillac, its boot filled with shoes, became a welcome sight as he drove from city to city, hosting clinics in school and college gymnasiums. Working with local coaches, he taught basic basketball skills and then used his charm with the nearest sporting goods stores to encourage them to sell more of his signature shoes.

In 1922, he began the Converse Basketball Yearbook, in which he named his selection of the best players, teams and coaches of the year. His picks were highly respected because he only selected players and teams he had actually seen play. This meant he often included talent from less heralded schools and colleges where sports journalists never went, making the book compulsory reading for coaches and talent spotters.

Taylor’s efforts to grow the game were effective, and as basketball grew in popularity so did the All Star. When the game debuted as a medal sport in the 1936 Olympics, it was All Stars that Team USA wore on the way to winning the first of seven consecutive gold medals. In 1939, when the first ever NCAA Championship game took place, both teams were wearing Chucks, and a year later the New York Rens won 88 straight games in a single season to take the first professional basketball championship, again, in All Stars. When Wilt Chamberlain scored a still record 100 points in single game he did in, yes, you guessed it, All Stars. To cap it all the real seal of approval came when they were named official sports shoe of the Olympic Games in 1938, remaining so all the way until 1968.

All wearing Converse All Stars, the United States Olympic basketball team celebrate their victory over France in the final of the 1948 London Olympic Games, their second of what would be seven consecutive Olympic gold medals.

By the time of Taylor’s death in 1969 he had left an incredible legacy: the game had never been so popular and it was estimated that 90 per cent of college and professional basketball players were wearing All Stars, helping Converse to take an 80 per cent share of the entire US sports shoe market.

Sadly, the early 1970s were not to be so kind. At the height of their popularity, Converse were dealt a blow they wouldn’t recover from by the entry of adidas and Nike into basketball. More advanced shoes like the Superstar and the Blazer made the All Star look like a relic, both in appearance and performance. Chucks began to be a rare sight on court, and in 1979 Tree Rollins held the sad honour of being the last ever NBA player to wear a pair of All Stars in a game.

However, the late 1970s and 1980s saw a revolution in fashion, with young people starting to dress in sportswear outside the gym. Until 1971, Converse sold the All Star in only two colours, black and white, but recognizing this change, it began to offer more colours and styles. As its popularity increased so did the range of colours, almost 500 at one point. Already a sporting icon, the All Star began a new life as a cultural one.

In 2015, 98 years after its birth, Converse introduced the Chuck Taylor All Star II, an all-new version that stayed true to the original’s classic look but refreshed it with new technologies fit for the twenty-first century. Reflecting Converse’s membership of the Nike family, the company having being bought by the Oregon-based giants in 2003, the new All Star featured a Nike Lunarlon sock liner to improve its cushioning and arch support and a perforated micro suede liner to provide better breathability. It was also lighter, more durable and offered better ankle and instep support.

Although All Star II brought Chucks right up to date, the world is still in love with the original. As American as ‘Old Glory’, its classic style and simplicity, unchanged since 1949, means that a pair of All Stars is sold every 43 seconds. It’s staggering to think that in 2017 the All Star celebrates its 100th anniversary, and while it may not grace the courts of the NBA anymore, it will probably grace the streets well beyond its 150th.

Converse ‘Chuck Taylor’ All Star II., (Converse, Inc).

IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY

1924 PARIS OLYMPIC GAMES

J.W. FOSTER & SONS RUNNING PUMPS

The story of British runners Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, immortalized in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, is a tale of two men whose determination helped them to overcome barriers and achieve their dreams of Olympic glory. A lesser known but parallel tale is that of Joseph Foster, a shoemaker who shared a similar determination in wanting to make the best athletic running shoes possible, and played a key role in Abrahams’ and Liddell’s success.

While the Foster family were to be forever associated with running, their story starts not on the running track, but on a cricket pitch. In 1862, Samuel Foster, the latest in a long line of Nottinghamshire shoemakers, received a special guest in his workshop who was to change his and his family’s destiny. That guest was Samuel Biddulph, star player of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club. He had a problem he needed Foster to solve. Although better known as a wicketkeeper, he had developed a new bowling action that could only work with good grip, but the hobnails on his shoes weren’t up to the job, especially on hard ground. Thinking the problem through, Foster realized that the answer was spikes. Working with a blacksmith, he produced a pair of shoes with short flat-headed nails in the sole that would bite into the ground, providing the bowler with plenty of grip. They worked well. So well that in 1863 Biddulph was taken on by the groundstaff of the MCC at Lord’s, giving Foster’s shoes a showcase that brought them much attention and led many cricketers to seek out a pair.

For 20 years Foster continued to make shoes for cricket and additionally golf and football, when in 1890 he welcomed another significant guest to his workshop, his grandson Joseph Foster. Joseph was a keen runner and on seeing his grandfather’s sports shoes realized that with a little modification, they could give him an advantage on the track.

Apprenticing himself to his grandfather, Joseph was determined to learn all he could about shoemaking and began to experiment and evolve the shoes, customizing them for running and finding ways to reduce their weight. In 1898, he finally perfected the shoes he called ‘Running Pumps’. Incredibly light and made of the strongest and softest leathers, they boasted six one-inch spikes for perfect grip. At every race he attended, Joseph was surrounded by customers keen to purchase a pair of his shoes and, as other runners began to set personal bests and smash records while wearing them, demand became so high that he had to move out of the bedroom that had served as his workshop and move next door to create the world’s first sports shoe factory.

Great Britain’s Harold Abrahams breaks the tape to win the 100m gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games wearing J.W. Foster & Sons Running Pumps.

Dubbed the ‘Olympic Works’, athletes came from far and wide to visit J.W. Foster’s and be fitted for a pair of his now famous Running Pumps. Strongly believing in an ethos based on the idea that each pair of shoes had to be custom made to suit each specific athlete, Foster even made shoes to suit specific races. From lightweight models that would only last a single race to models designed for use only at a specific track, no effort was spared in order to make shoes that would give the runner wearing them an advantage.

It was this advantage that made Foster’s creations appeal to elite athletes and they began to be seen wherever British athletes competed. However, it was on the feet of Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games that they earned the addition of the word ‘Famous’ to their name. With Abrahams winning gold in the 100m and Liddell gold in the 400m while wearing them, the shoes quickly became a household name.

Joseph Foster’s legacy, however, was to be far greater than just the Running Pumps. After his death in 1933, his sons James and William took over the business and expanded the company’s football and rugby ranges, but remained true to their father’s mission of creating shoes designed for athletes. Their boots could be found on the feet of top players from across the country and such was their fame that when the legendary Moscow Dynamo made their first trip to the West in 1945, their first stop was Bolton, to the Olympic Works to be personally fitted with new boots.

The family business continued to thrive but in the 1950s disagreements between the generations over the company’s direction led to a split, and James’ and William’s sons Joe and Jeff left to form their own company. With the rise of adidas and Puma, Foster’s began to decline but for Joe and Jeff it was a different story. The company they founded continues to thrive to this day. You probably know it better as Reebok.

J.W. Foster & Sons Running Pump (Reebok Archive).

THE REBEL WITH A RACKET

1934 WIMBLEDON CHAMPIONSHIPS

DUNLOP GREEN FLASH 1555

Fred Perry and the Dunlop Green Flash was a match made in Wimbledon. Both British icons and products of the 1930s, they each brought a new approach and style to tennis after years of status quo. Despite leaving legacies that were to last for many years, both suffered periods during which they fell from grace, but re-emerged to be once more revered.

Born in 1909, the son of a cotton spinner and left-wing politician from Stockport, Fred Perry’s family moved to London when he was nine. Educated at Ealing Grammar School, he began playing tennis on public courts near his family’s housing estate. A far cry from the public schools and country clubs his contemporaries hailed from, and marking him out as an outsider to the upper echelons of tennis. When he won a place on the Davis Cup team in 1933, a team member remarked, ‘As we’ve got to have the bloody upstart, we might as well knock him into shape and try to get the best out of him.’ Their attitude towards this working-class gatecrasher was clear.

Perry was to have an impact on tennis that would change it both on and off the court. Although he is now remembered as Great Britain’s greatest tennis player, in the 1930s when tennis was almost exclusively the domain of the British establishment, his rise to fame was as warmly welcomed as a fox is in a chicken coop.

First hitting the shelves in 1929, the same year that Fred Perry first qualified for Wimbledon, the Green Flash was his tennis shoe of choice. It was, in fact, almost 100 years after its makers Dunlop created one of the first dedicated sports shoes. Originally called ‘sand shoes’ (for wearing on the beach) they later became known as plimsolls (because the canvas and rubber bond looked like a ship’s plimsoll line) and were among the very first sports shoes. They were cheap and functional, but as people become more fashion-conscious in the post-war 1920s, a shoe with a touch more style was needed.

Dunlop’s answer was the Green Flash. Unlike later versions, the original was almost all white with only ‘flashes’ of green on the toe box and the thin stitching on the upper. Its moulded rubber sole featured a herringbone pattern designed to give extra grip on grass. Essentially, it was the next step in the evolution of the humble plimsoll.

Fred Perry was undaunted by his reception among the tennis establishment and saw the snobbery he faced as motivation to do better. His approach would hold him in good stead. Playing at Wimbledon in 1934, the crowd was noticeably cold towards him. Being mostly made up of traditional tennis gentry, the presence of a player who wasn’t a ‘gentleman’ was almost offensive to them. A bachelor lifestyle, his clear ambition and the fact he wasn’t afraid to indulge in a little gamesmanship also did little to endear him to fans. Resolute despite the hostility, Perry advanced through the tournament. Given the crowd’s dim view of him, his opponent in the Men’s Singles final seemed fated for him.

Joining Perry in the final was Australian Jack ‘Gentleman’ Crawford. The very model of a gentleman amateur, Crawford had an almost demure style which contrasted with Perry’s more physical game, making him the favourite of the crowd and officials. Nevertheless, Perry’s steel saw him through to win his first Wimbledon title 6–3, 6–0, 7–5. But even victory wasn’t enough to win him any favour. The disdain with which his win was met was clear when his All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club members tie, awarded to all new Champions, was dismissively left draped over a chair in the dressing room instead of being presented to him personally. Making matters worse, in the changing room Perry overheard an official boast that he had given the winner’s champagne to the defeated Jack Crawford, describing him as ‘the better man’.

Fred Perry wearing Dunlop Green Flash on the way to winning his third consecutive Wimbledon Men’s Singles Championship in 1936.

Dunlop Green Flash c. 1975 (Wimbledon Museum).

If his lack of pedigree wasn’t enough of a problem, his attitude to the amateur principles that tennis held dear made things even worse. The International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) had decreed that tennis should be played purely for sport, not profit, meaning it was forbidden for Perry or any other player to be paid to play or make endorsements. This meant that by the rules, he wasn’t allowed to receive any money from Dunlop for wearing Green Flash. Perry made no secret of the fact he wanted to monetize his fame, leading to frequent clashes with the ILTF.

Perry’s attitude to training was also looked upon with suspicion. He was determined to make tennis a physical game and practised relentlessly. He also trained with Arsenal Football Club most mornings and played in weekly friendly matches. At a time when training and preparation were seen as ‘ungentlemanly’, his approach was deemed uncouth, and so despite winning again in 1935 and 1936, Perry was still seen as ‘the bloody upstart’. In the 1935 final, the crowd were noticeably warmer to him, but that had more to do with the nationality of his opponent, Baron Gottfried von Cramm. Even an aristocratic background wasn’t enough to win over a crowd, who, after the Great War, were hostile to anyone who was German. When Perry faced him again in the 1936 final, the crowd’s sentiment towards the German remained the same.

Both finals were great examples of Perry’s style of psychological warfare. In the 1935 final, knowing it would irritate Von Cramm no end, he played with the lining of his trouser pockets pulled out. He also played with a bright white racket, believing it would distract his opponent. And in the 1936 final his demolition of Von Cramm in less than 45 minutes was, in part, because the Wimbledon masseur had mentioned that he had treated the German player for a groin strain. Knowing the injury would impair his opponent’s movement, Perry deliberately played wide forehand shots.

Disillusioned with the ILTF, Perry made the decision to leave Britain after his last Wimbledon win and to the horror of the establishment joined the professional circuit. Professionalism was so abhorred in Britain that he was immediately made an outcast, barred from using ILTF associated clubs and stripped of his honorary All England Club membership. Perry remained undaunted. If his own country could turn its back on him, he could do the same, and in 1938 he became an American citizen. With players who turned professional effectively not existing as far as the ILTF was concerned, Perry was essentially written out of British tennis history.

As a result it was many years before Fred Perry began to receive the kind of recognition a three-times Wimbledon Champion deserved. The 78-year wait for a new British Men’s Singles Champion, that ended with Andy Murray’s victory in 2013, meant that the esteem Perry was held in grew with each passing year and, thanks to Dunlop keeping it alive, so too did his association with the Green Flash.

By the 1970s, the Green Flash was as much a British icon as Perry, and despite having largely disappeared from tennis courts it had become hugely popular as streetwear.

The tennis establishment too had begun to appreciate Perry’s achievements and in 1984 he was invited to the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his first singles triumph with the unveiling of a bronze statue of himself. They also renamed the Somerset Road entrance to the grounds as the Fred Perry Gates.

At the height of its popularity during the 1970s, according to Dunlop a million pairs of Green Flash a year were sold.

The shoe had evolved since being worn to victory by Perry, featuring a padded collar and tongue for added comfort, an insole made of sponge, eyelets for greater ventilation and a few more splashes of green. But things weren’t so rosy in the 1980s. The advent of new technologies, like Nike’s Air and Reebok’s Pump systems, began to make the Green Flash look its age and by the 1990s they were rarely seen on the streets. But much like Fred Perry in his later years, the same people who denigrated them came to love them once again. The craze in sneaker culture for reissues has elevated the Green Flash to the status of a fashion icon and it’s now more likely to be found in boutiques than in sports shops.

Despite his death in 1995, like his shoes, Fred Perry is more celebrated today than he was in his prime. The establishment that once sneered at his background and cast him out of tennis now revere and invoke him and one of the most fitting tributes to his achievements currently stands in the club that once took his membership away. Today, welcoming fans to Centre Court and in pride of place at the heart of Wimbledon proudly stands that same bronze statue of Fred Perry, right where he belongs.

JESSE VS THE NAZIS

1936 BERLIN OLYMPIC GAMES

GEBRÜDER DASSLER SPORTSCHUHFABRIK ‘WAITZER’ SPIKES

Having set three world records and equalled a fourth in one day at Ann Arbour in Michigan in 1935, James ‘Jesse’ Cleveland Owens was already a superstar before he arrived in Germany for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. But it was in Berlin that year that he became a legend. The son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave, he arrived in Berlin to scenes similar to the reception the Beatles would receive 30 years later, with a crush of girls waiting with scissors to cut off snippets of his clothes as souvenirs. Afraid of being mobbed, he had to be accompanied by guards whenever he left the Olympic Village.

The irony of his welcome was that at the time the German Chancellor was a certain Adolf Hitler, and the country was in the grip of the Nazi regime. The Berlin Games was intended to be a showcase of Aryan superiority, however, Hitler hadn’t counted on the popularity and performance of a black American athlete, completely disproving a key part of Nazi dogma.

Another hindrance that Hitler could not have foreseen was the collaboration of one of his own countrymen, Adolf ‘Adi’ Dassler in Owens’ triumph. The shoemaker brothers Adi and Rudolph ‘Rudi’ Dassler had realized that the best advertising for their running spikes was victory on the track, and recognizing that Owens was the greatest athlete of his day, Adi was determined to get him to wear Gebrüder Dassler (Dassler Brothers) spikes.

Adolf and Rudolf Dassler had first opened their sports shoe factory in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, in July 1924. A rebel from an early age, Adi Dassler defied convention and spent most of his spare time playing sports. He had a passion for physical activity, particularly long-distance running, javelin throwing, shot-putting and skiing.