We had been making small volumes of what would become Cologne Spike for a while, initially with a clear UHL sport plate and then we developed a new spike plate at KP Plastics. KP were known to Paul Brown from his BATA days and they made the new Foster Cradle for us. Paul made a maquette and graded the plate for three sizes. I then drew the plate in plan and elevation thanks to my O’level technical drawing/metal work. The new plate was in PU, so much easier to work with in production than the nylon UHL sport plates.
Thanks to Bob’s purchase of the Strobel machine, we could now make full slip lasted shoes. To me its ironic, that Great Grandad’s Turn shoe, unconstructed shoes with a spring steel front plate and drop forged spikes had come full circle into this super lightweight shoe.
Records began to fall when Sydney Maree broke the 1500 metre World Record in a pair of what was to be named Cologne after that race (August 1983 3:31.24). These shoes where preproduction examples hand made by yours truly. Reebok capitalised on this with a special edition GL1600 simply called the Sydney Maree trainer.
Steve Jones won the 1984 Chicago Marathon in London Race flats. I made several pairs of Ultra lightweight shoes for him by punching out the midsoles to save weight. He cruised home in a world record time of 2:08:05, another record for my shoes. Well so I thought until just last year, a friend of mine, Jim Van Dine, told me Steve took a pair of Korean made London from his desk the day before the race and broke the record in those!
The following year my ego was restored, Steve came home in 2:08:16 to smash the race record in the 1985 London Marathon wearing a pair of Paris, we had only lightly customed for him.
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Foster's Famous Shoe's 