Word: bowerman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This put him in conflict with his coach, the almost equally legendary Bill Bowerman (Sutherland), no mean athletic aesthetician himself. He's presented as a more forgiving and gently eccentric kind of obsessive, disapproving of his pupil's stubborn individuality but also watchfully guarding a passion for excellence that matches his own. Theirs is a marvelously subtle wrangle: Prefontaine ran Bowerman's race in the 5,000 m at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and was beaten; but it was Bowerman who brought him back from self-pity (and maybe self-destruction) and onto the comeback trail before Prefontaine was killed...
...sports heritage is genuine. Knight launched the company in 1964 with Bill Bowerman, his former track coach at the University of Oregon. Knight's business plan, hatched as an M.B.A. project at Stanford, was straightforward. He figured that by importing shoes made in Japan, where labor was then cheap, he could undercut the dominant player, Adidas. At first he merely imported Japanese running shoes. Then Bowerman, in the kitchen one morning, had one of those Aha! ideas. He made an outsole by pouring a rubber compound into the waffle iron. The waffle trainer was born--and Nike was ready...
...From Bowerman, a legendary coach, Knight got two things: an innovative track shoe and a relentless appetite for competition. "Every time I tour people around, I show them a picture of Phil Knight running behind Jim Grelle," says Hollister, who ran track with Knight and became one of Nike's first employees. It was Knight's customary position. Grelle was a champion, and Knight never caught him, says Hollister, but he never stopped pursuing. Another Oregon track god, Steve Prefontaine, became patriarch of the culture. "Pre," a rebellious soul and ferocious competitor, prodded Knight endlessly to improve the quality...