Word: bowerman
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...most successful U.S. manufacturer of the fancy new footwear is Blue Ribbon Sports of Beaverton, Ore., a privately held company founded by Running Enthusiasts Phil Knight, 42, and Bill Bowerman, 69. In just eight years, Blue Ribbon Sports and their Nike (rhymes with psyche) shoes have gone from a standing start to sales of $260 million, and this year they could climb to $360 million or more. Nike is now aiming to overtake Adidas, the West German sports giant. Nike already has 136 models, for every sport from running and tennis to volleyball and wrestling. This year it plans...
Knight and Bowerman, the former University of Oregon track coach, met in 1958, when Knight was a business student at Oregon and a miler of some accomplishment (best time: 4:13). For years the crusty coach had been trying to design a better running shoe in his kitchen. "American shoes were just awful," says Bowerman, because they were heavy and lacked cushioning...
...Knight and his old track mentor each put up $500 and went into business importing Japanese running shoes. In 1972 they first produced their own make of shoe, naming it after the Greek goddess of victory. Just before the 1972 Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore., Knight and Bowerman persuaded several marathon runners to try them. Runners wearing Adidas finished first, second and third, but the next four runners wore Nikes...
Nike's breakthrough came as a result of some Sunday-morning fiddling by Bowerman in 1975. He began tinkering with the waffle iron that had just been used to make breakfast. With some urethane rubber, he fashioned a new type of sole whose tiny rubber studs made it springy. Bowerman ruined the iron, but he created a new running shoe that was soon grabbed by the army of week end jocks suffering from bruised feet...
Rewards of Age. The fact is that no man or woman with a verifiable birth record is known to have lived longer than 113 years. As Actuary Walter G. Bowerman has pointed out, assertions of extreme longevity originate mainly in remote, underdeveloped regions among illiterate peoples whose only evidence of age is their own claim, possibly supported by an interested relative...