Shoe Wars: Adidas v Puma

The greatest sports rivlary is not Michigan v Ohio State, or the Giants v Dodgers, or any other of those playground "my team can beat your team" fairytales listed on ESPN. No, the greatest sports rivalry revolves around siblings: brothers who created the companies Adidas and Puma.

In 1924, in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, two brothers started a shoe business. The older was a veteran of the Great War. The younger, Adolf--or Adi, as his family called him--had used their mother's large washroom to start making shoes in 1920, out of whatever materials he could scrounge.

They named their company Gebruder Dassler Schulfabrik. According to Sneakerhead.com, the brothers had 25 employees and were turning out 100 pairs of athletic shoes a day by 1927.

In the early 1930s, Dassler began designing shoes for specific sports. Dutch atheletes in the 1928 Olympics wore Dassler shoes, and sales took off.

The Puma website lists highlights of Dassler's history. In 1936, the brothers hit gold--literally:

"Competing at the Berlin Olympic Games, American hero Jesse Owens wins four Gold medals wearing Dassler shoes. During the Games, almost every member of the German Football team wears Dassler shoes. In total there are seven Gold and five Bronze medal winners. Additionally, athletes wearing Dassler shoes shatter two world and three Olympic records."

If you know your history, you know what happened next. Company profiles are a bit vague on the brothers' wartime activities, but sneakerhead claims factories were siezed by the Nazis. Bookrags.com says that while older brother Rudi was drafted into the German army, Adi ran the business and produced footware for the soldiers. Rudi was captured by the Allies, and both men emerged from the war with their differences exacerbated. They refused to work together any longer.

Rudi moved across town and across the river to open his own company, and named it Puma. That same year he introduced the ATOM, his first soccer shoe--or football boot. The West German National team wore it during their first post-war match, and player Herbert Burdenski scored the team's first goal while wearing the Puma ATOM.

Adi Dassler named his company Adidas, of course. He'd developed the 3-stripe logo in 1941, and registered it as Adidas' trademark. In the Helsinki Olympics of 1952, Adidas shoes reigned: Czech runner Emil Zátopek won three gold medals wearing Adidas: the 5000 meter, the 10,000 meter, and the marathon. To top it off, his wife Dana Ingrova took the gold in the women's javelin event . . . wearing Adidas shoes.

The brothers never reconciled, or even spoke to each other again. As for Herzogenaurach--it split down the middle. Adidas and Puma were the biggest employers around and everyone was loyal to one brother or the other.

The BBC interviewed Frank Dassler, grandson of Rudi, who said,

"There was an Adidas butcher and a Puma butcher. If there was a chance to avoid being in the same class as another Adidas person, from the Puma perspective, then we certainly tried to avoid this. Certainly, the restaurants were split, so there was a typical Adidas hotel or Adidas restaurant and the other guys didn't want to go there."

Rudi succumbed to lung cancer in 1974, leaving Puma to his son. The family sold the company in 1989. Adi died in 1978, and his son toook over Adidas till his death in 1987. Even in the Herzogenaurach cemetary, their graves are as far apart as possible.

Barbara Smit has written a book about the brothers' rivalry, and the English version will be available in March 2008.