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Adidas Gazelle
From the day Adidas Gazelle were first released up to our days, more than four decades have passed. Time did not spoil the reputation of these classic sports shoes – on the contrary, it has contributed to expand their fans base from all over the world, from every age class, from every walk of life. The Gazelles are now established as one of the Originals models of the Adidas company and they are globally recognized and sought after.
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Back in 1968, when the Gazelles took their first steps on the tracks and streets, Adidas was already a big and influential name in the sports shoes and apparel manufacturing industry. The bold and impressive business moves of the company’s founder, Adolf (Adi) Dassler, the quality of its products and the celebrity of sports stars wearing Adidas sports gear had contributed to the creation of a bright halo around the Adidas name. All this, of course, for good reason, since the usability and durability of the shoes surpass even the company's fame.
Adi’s dream for primacy had already been incarnated in the person of a track athlete from the US, who made the whole world catch their breaths in the 1930s. During the notorious Olympic Games of Munich, Germany, winged Jesse Owens rode like a gazelle, wearing the shoes that Adi Dassler had persuaded him to use only a few days earlier. In his Adidas running shoes, Owens managed to win four gold medals in equal number of races. Hitler, who was hosting the 1936 Summer Olympics, was extremely displeased with the developments, but Jesse made history for himself and for the Adidas company.
Adidas repeatedly provided sports shoes for champions and winning teams in top league sports events. In the 1954 FIFA World Cup Final, the so-called “miracle of Berne,” Adidas shoed the German team who played against Hungary, presenting for the first time its soccer shoes with built-in spikes. After many more successes of his shoes in the tracks and fields, ten years before leaving his final breath, Adi entered once more his designer workshop in order to produce this legendary shoe, worn by generations of athletes and non-athletes alike.
Adidas, Riding with Gazelles
Adidas Gazelle owe their name to the slender, graceful antelope that runs like the wind in the sandy expanses of Africa and Asia. Whoever sees a gazelle, leaping from sand dune to sand dune, will find it hard to believe that this tiny, delicate creature is capable of performing such long jumps. Yet, this is a gazelle’s survival secret, making it difficult for its hunters to capture and knock it off.
Adidas Gazelle are well-crafted and light. They easily remind of the shapely, agile animal roaming the African deserts, with ears wiggling at the faintest unsettling sound, with an elastic body ready to get off the ground in no time in order to escape the lions and other fatal threats surrounding it all the time.
The reverberations of Jesse Owens’ inspiring win must have been still alive in that post-war world; the remembrance of this pair of long, slender, strong, muscular legs that overrode the racist overtones of the Munich sports event and shamed the Nazi leader, remained with Adidas. The two images, the antelope and the champion sprinter, merged in the public's conscience and contributed, along with the superb Adidas quality, to the establishment of the Adidas Gazelle as an iconic trainer.