I’ve never heard of Bill Dellinger!

Many fellow adi-addicts have never heard of Bill Dellinger, yet he was responsible for one of the greatest technological additions to Adidas shoes.

Many fellow adi-addicts have never heard of Bill Dellinger, he was the athletics coach of the University of Oregon in 1982. In this advert for the adidas runners the Atlanta, Oregon and Lady Oregon it clearly shows the innovation that Dellinger invented.

In co-operation with adidas, Dellinger developed the so called “Dellinger web”. a nylon netting that was placed within a foam midsole to work as both reinforcement and for more durability; with a system of distributing the impact of each step more evenly throughout the sole.

First appearing on the Adidas Marathon running shoe in the 1980’s, the Dellinger Web has been utilised on many of the brand’s classic runners throughout the 80s and has become a signature element of the company’s design language along with other technologies like the shell toe, torsion bar and more recently Boost.

Some of the models featuring the web are the Adidas Marathon, Oregon (now Forest Grove), Atlanta, Toronto, Seattle Hi, New York, Queststar, ZX380 and Waterproof.

Also quite a few ZXZ & Adidas x Obyo releases and now the Derupt , which utilises the Dellinger Web uniquely all over the model.

Also featuring on a Jacques Chassaing designed Basketball model (Michael Jordan’s favourite adidas)the Forum-a brilliant read of that on the much missed Gary Warner’s website.

In fact such is the legacy of dellinger that the adidas relationship would set the bar for trainer running technology for years to come akin to something like the 3 stripes equivalent of Bill Bowerman (in fact Dellinger was assistant coach to Bowerman) to nike and Rod Dixon to saucony.

So now you all know what Bill Dellinger did for adidas and especially some of those Trainers/Sneakers that we all love!