Your left foot and your right foot are mirror-images of each other. Yet it is only for the past two centuries or so that different shoes have been made for them. Smart leather shoes, meanwhile, are not very comfortable for sports. All the same, the first football boots still looked a lot like them, simply with a few studs added to the sole. Their modern equivalents still have those characteristic studs, but otherwise look totally different. Today’s sports shoes are designed to keep improving your performance, which goes hand in hand with technical innovations and science. It was back in 1923 that Converse produced its first ‘All Star’ basketball boot for the player Chuck Taylor. Its special feature was a rubber sole, sourced from car tyres, which gave much better grip. Old tyres may no longer be an ingredient, but grip is still every bit as important for basketball stars like five-time Dutch national championship winner Stefan Wessels or athletes such as marathon winner Abdi Nageeye and Olympic champion Sifan Hassan. Because, believe it or not, the Olympic marathon event was still being run and won barefoot as late as 1960! The greatest performances nowadays are run on shoes with carbon soles.