The town of Herzogenaurach, near Hamburg, Germany had a huge impact on the story of the training shoe. In the year of 1948 the nicknamed ‘godfather’ of training shoes, adidas was launched on the world. Adolf Dassler, a cobbler working in Herzogenaurach, decided on a name for his new company. He combined his nickname ‘Adi’ with the first three letters of his surname Dassler, and the name adidas was born. He also decided to use lowercase ‘a’ to make the name stand out from rivals. When he died in 1978 aged 78 he held more than 700 patents related to sports shoes and other athletic equipment. He was honored by becoming the first non-american to be introduced into the American Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame. Adidas was also groundbreaking away from the sports field by becoming the first sports brand to sponsor non-athletes (Run DMC).

In 1949 adidas added the three stripes to its trainers to strengthen the shoe and add extra stability to the foot, the trademark that is now recognized around the world was launched.

Adi Colour
Adi colour was released as an interactive shoe; it was plain white with its three stripes to match. The shoes were made in hi and lo versions and adidas supplied a set of marker pens so you could colour the shoes as you wanted.

Dublin
One of the ‘City’ series of shoes, the Dublin was developed in 1970’s early 1980’s as part of the leisure category. The city models were a notable step away from the performance shoes. The colours were extremely important, and this Dublin model has the same silhouette, flat shoe and coloured sued upper design common to the ‘European Capital City’ series. These were also popular with the football fans, too.

Forest Hills
These tennis shoes were released in the late 1970’s Forest Hills are very popular with UK football fans. Only 400 pairs of the yellow soled version originally entered the UK and they were all bought by Wade Smith in Liverpool. The ordinary shoe has a white sole.

SL72
This super light (SL) running/jogging shoe was launched for the 1972 Olympics (hence the 72) and was a more subdued colour than the SL73.

Gazelle
This all round training shoe was launched in 1968 and has a flat sole and soft velour leather upper. The gazelle had a huge following with UK football fans and came in a large range of colours the pink one being a rare example.

Throughout the history of trainers, domination of the market comes and goes and in the mid 1970’s the top eight were described as ‘adidas and the Seven Dwarves’. And even though adidas may not be the current major player in world trainer marketplace, you need to bear the old saying ‘form is temporary, class is permanent’ firmly in mind.

Neil Harvey is the webmaster of http://www.justsoles.com/ offering discount retro trainers.