|
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Jones may wear clear half-shoes
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- If this is American sprinter Marion Jones' Olympic fairy tale, the slippers are ready. Not glass exactly, but clear, extremely expensive plastic. Actually, they're just half-shoes. No heel. Jones doesn't need one because her heels never touch the ground when she's sprinting. It is touted as the lightest spiked track shoe ever -- 100 grams (3.5 ounces), and the first without a heel. The shoe was developed by Tobie Hatfield and Kevin Hoffer, the same Nike team that came up with shoes covered with shimmering droplets of 24-carat gold that Michael Johnson will wear in his Sydney races. Jones' shoes are the product of nearly three years of research and design that began when Hatfield and Hoffer asked Jones what color of shoe she wanted for the Olympics. "She goes 'Can you make them clear?'" Hatfield said. "We looked at each other and said 'OK.' We're in advanced design. We like challenges, and that was certainly a challenge, so we said 'Let's go for it.'" Since no fabric is clear, the designers turned to a thermoplastic urethane similar to the material used in the air bags in soles of the Nike Air models. The idea of a heel-less design intrigued the duo, so Nike hired a film crew to film Jones' feet in her 100-meter run at the 1998 Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore. "We wanted to see for sure if her he heels didn't touch the track," Hatfield said. "They shot 500 frames per second, and it was clear, very evident, that at no time did she touch her heel until after the competition. "We discussed it with her, along with the clear concept, and this is what you get." The shoe is molded perfectly to the size of Jones' foot. That makes the shoe almost a part of her foot, Hoffer said. "She has true support in the upper, where a lot of track shoes don't," he said. Jones isn't sure she will use them in her Olympic races. She's trained in them but is a bit nervous about using something so innovative in such important competition. "'This is the most innovative, most 'out there' spike ever made," Hatfield said. "We've been doing a lot of testing with her. She's been doing a lot of working on her technique in her run. A lot of times the athlete needs to go back to what's comfortable and what's working for her." Her backups are a pair of custom-made black models covered with shiny chrome, the same material that is used on the bumpers of new cars. She has said she is optimistic about wearing the new shoe, but maybe only in a preliminary. "She is very determined to make it work," Hatfield said. Don't expect to see the shoe in any store anytime soon. It would be way too expensive. The two designers say they don't even know what the prototype cost.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
