A Shoe with Three Stripes

When I was in high school and on the track team, I wore Adidas track shoes. They were blue with three white stripes that I stained yellow, so it would go with our school colors.

I had no idea at the time about the history behind the  style of track shoe I owned.

Christoph Von Wilhelm Dassler was a worker in a shoe factory, while his wife Pauline ran a small laundry in their Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach. After leaving school, their son, Rudolf “Rudi” Dassler, joined his father at the shoe factory.

Meanwhile, their younger son, Adolf “Adi” Dassler started making his own sports shoes in his mother’s wash kitchen. By July 1924, Rudi returned to Herzogenaurach to join his Adi’s business, which they named Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory.

During the 1936 Summer Olympics Adi persuaded American Jesse Owens to use shoes made in their factory. It was the first time an African-American had ever been asked to endorse a product.

I imagine this didn’t make der Fuehrer Adolph Hitler very happy.

Following Owens’s haul of four gold medals, his success cemented Dassler shoes reputation among the world’s most famous sportsmen. During World War II, the brothers had a falling out, which eventually led to the company folding by the time the war ended.

Adi started another company, formally registering it as Adidas in August 1949 using the first three letters from his first and second name.