When it comes to classic careers in sports, it’s hard to beat Kenny Moore. As a student-athlete at the University of Oregon, he excelled as one of legendary coach Bill Bowerman’s absolute best distance runners. A two-time Olympian, Moore’s outstanding athletic achievements include winning the largest footrace in the world, San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers, six times in a row. This distinction makes him the all-time leader in victories for this legendary event. After retiring from athletic competition, Kenny Moore enjoyed a distinguished career as a sports journalist with Sports Illustrated and a public activist who fought for the release of Mamo Wolde – a former competitor who had been falsely imprisoned in Ethiopia.
While running under the tutelage of Coach Bowerman, Kenny Moore logged over a thousand miles in the various shoe prototypes that Bowerman had designed. These designs would ultimately coalesce into the legendary Nike Cortez – the shoe that gave birth to perhaps the largest, most important, and most successful manufacturer of athletic footwear and apparel in global history.
The Nike Classic Cortez Kenny Moore recalls the early Bill Bowerman prototypes that predate the Nike Cortez. It features details that are inspired by the hand-cobbled Bowerman originals, such as debossed branding on the heel and a signed sockliner with a printout of one of the coach’s signature training regimens.