Athletic Shoe Selection

For athletes, carefully chosen, well-fitted, comfortable athletic shoes are vital to success, while poorly selected, ill-fitting shoes can lead to performance problems. Athletic shoes serve diverse purposes, which include protection from the environment (from impact shock, abrasion, temperature, moisture), comfort, assisting in the prevention of injury, and, additionally in some sports, functioning to couple limbs and feet to the sporting device (e.g., skis, cycling pedals, snowboard, etc.), all of which contribute to optimal performance.

Athletic shoes are big business. The U.S. athletic shoe marketplace is a $19.4 billion per year business. Running shoes make up the largest number of shoes sold, followed by “low-performance” (fashion), basketball, and cross-training shoes. Marketing has always had a large impact on the selection of athletic equipment, particularly shoes. Because it is often hard to discern fact from fiction in advertising, marketing cannot be relied on to inform us about footgear. One must look farther than noticing which champion is wearing which kind of shoes or viewing the running and style magazines, in which one finds images of shoes hot off the waffle iron, shoes with the latest computer chip inside, shoes with springs, and shoes with air cells and gel. The hype surrounding a type of shoe must not be the major influence in selecting athletic shoes.

Advertising by manufacturers of athletic shoes does not stop at old-fashioned print and television advertising but now extends to the web, blogs, and social networks. The founders of Adidas and Puma, the Dassler brothers, were among the first to seek out famous athletes to wear their shoes. They aggressively competed against each other, convincing athletes to wear their products, often by paying them, despite restrictions on amateur athletes endorsing products. Athletes have been pursued to wear shoes to promote sales as far back as the Olympics of 1936. The holder of several world track records and soon to be a four-time Olympic gold medalist, Jesse Owens was persuaded to wear the shoe manufactured by the Dasslers’ combined company, before their split. Abebe Bikila, the barefoot marathoner of 1960, was pursued by Tiger, Adidas, and Puma at the [Page 117]Tokyo Olympics in 1964. He finally wore Pumas during the Olympic marathon event and set a world record. In 1972, Mark Spitz, Olympic swimmer and winner of six gold medals, walked to the podium carrying a pair of Adidas.