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From Cacho's shoes to carbon fiber shoes: the history of JOMA and athletics

From Cacho's shoes to carbon fiber shoes: the history of JOMA and athletics

Who hasn't worn Joma at some point in their life? They have been a fundamental help for thousands of boys and girls who were starting out in athletics in particular (and in sports in general). Those of Portillo de Toledo have always been clear about this, it has been a founding mantra of the company erected by Fructuoso López (he created it when he was in his twenties and is still at the foot of the canyon at the edge of his eighties): support the base. But they didn't just stop there, because in the 1980s Joma created a professional athletics team in which we all looked at each other when we started and to which we would have liked to belong... for that reason wearing Joma spikes (an acronym for José Manuel, Fructuoso's eldest son) or one of his versatile training models was a source of pride; Because you dressed like the elite. Big names passed through the club: Rodrigo Gavela (he held the Spanish marathon record and was twice Spanish champion in the 42.195 km) or Fermín Cacho (words are unnecessary, although we can summarize by saying that he is the best Spanish athlete in history and one of the most outstanding of all time at a planetary level). Joma is the only Spanish shoe that can boast of being an Olympic champion.

It has always known how to make high-quality shoes and keep up with the latest technologies and competitors with a much more affordable product for everyone. It is democracy applied to popular sport. They are legion those who put on the yellow nails almost forty years ago to be able to move with solvency in the mud of the crosses and the tartan of the tracks.

Mythical models have had the brand. They made us better from the days of crushing, like the 367 that was released in 1981. It was a bestseller for its good price, functionality and durability. Joma had the ability to easily play with the different materials that made up the shoe by carrying out the entire process in Portillo de Toledo, its headquarters. Homemade flavor that, by the way, was a business advantage. They themselves created several shoes with innovative technologies that came with different foam cylinders to be placed in the heel to suit the consumer, as in the JV-3, in which the three holes where soft foam cylinders could be inserted, more hard, or leave them that way so that the heel would have more crushing margin and the landing with the ground would be much softer. This ability to put different types of EVA in each place of the midsole made them pioneers in offering various proposals for many types of runner.

In the 1980s, Joma referenced their shoes by numbers, but from 1992 they were named after athletes: the most advanced was the Fermín Cacho. They were followed by the Antonio Serrano models and they also released two with the name of Rodrigo Gavela, current director of the Asturian Dairy Central Women's Race Circuit. There was an excellent Fermín Cacho model for the road, "which turned out very well for me and I used it for several years in its different evolutions," says Gavela. It was very recognizable by its white and red colors, very robust, balanced, stable, with excellent shock absorption, great grip and good sensations on any terrain.

COLLABORATING WITH PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES

Joma developed many of its products in close collaboration with its athletes so that they responded exactly to the needs of top-level competitors. For example, in the 1990s marathon shoe, it was Rodrigo Gavela who, together with the designer, was in charge of putting on or taking off a midsole, or including a denser or softer type of Phylon in each area of ​​the tread, as needed. Thus, the marathoners managed to have one of the best shoes on the world market to run the mythical distance, without risking it to a model of another brand, finer or harder, which could injure them. “We made two models, one 'super fast' and one 'fast'. The first one we managed to lighten it up to about 210 grams (in my size 44) and the other one was somewhat less light, it was around 245 grams. They differed fundamentally in the sole, white and very fine in the lighter ones and black and thicker in the others. This second model was designed more for less light runners or those who did not compete as fast”, explains Gavela. And he continues:

“During the first months we dedicated ourselves to testing different types of cut EVA midsoles. Although Joma already manufactured training shoes with injected EVA, spikes and marathon shoes were still made with cut EVA rubber. This allowed him to manufacture short series of the same model with different densities and test them with many athletes to see which ones gave the best results. The feedback from the tests was available in a few weeks, this allowed them to release improved models every so often”.

For the midsole, the man who ran the marathon in 2:10:27 remembers that “we tested many types of EVA, combining three levels of hardness and absorption until we found the most balanced. We also studied a lot the arrangement of the different hardnesses, to give the shoe more stability. In the heel area was the hardest EVA, in the shape of a horseshoe (extended on the inside to under the bridge); inside the softer EVA; and in the middle and front part another one of medium hardness”.

Another important factor was its thickness to find the best combination of absorption, comfort and reactivity, with a height of 2.3 centimeters in the heel area and 1.2 in the heel area. From there, Gavela points out that “we focus on other important improvements such as the sole and the insole. The sole was Vibram with very good grip on all types of asphalt, even if it was wet, and with a high insulating capacity against the temperature of the asphalt, which was greatly appreciated in summer. The template was Bayer and it was close; it had an incredible ability to absorb sweat, allowing the foot to always be dry and avoiding many chafing in marathons; and when stuck, it never moved. These two components far exceeded what was on the market at the time from other brands. The glove of the shoe was always white and very breathable, so as not to accumulate heat on the sunniest days and thus keep the temperature of the foot lower. With a very hard and rigid reinforcement surrounding the heel area, reinforced with a plastic wedge to give it even more stability. This prevented excessive vibrations in the Achilles tendon, which over a distance as long as the marathon can accelerate muscle and tendon fatigue. Which would greatly harm the final result. We also looked for a medium last to fit the foot like a glove, which gave an impressive feeling of support. A model so good was achieved that today it would still be a leading shoe to compete, if we do not count the carbon plate ones. What we cannot say is that it was very striking or aggressive in design. It seemed elegant and simple to me, and with it I broke the Spanish marathon record”. But the devotion to technology of the people of La Mancha did not stop there. In that same decade of the nineties they brought to light models such as the Roma 1467 —with the signature of Gavela himself— that featured visible front and rear air chambers.

The concern and the work to launch reliable products on the market that really perform (the demand of the popular broker has grown at a rate almost as high as the company itself) during all these decades, has led them to create several proprietary technologies that reach to date and they continue to modernize, such as its well-known Stabilis stability system, the adjustment and support of the Sportech upper or the Phylon that now forms the Rebound set in the midsole.

THE UNION WITH THE RFEA

In 2009 Joma takes a big step and joins the Royal Spanish Athletics Federation to dress more than 575 athletes, 300 coaches, 980 volunteers and 600 judges. The agreement between the two is still valid and the successes and medals of the athletes are produced under the comfort of the best technical materials to compete on tracks around the world.

The Olympic Games are always the most important sporting event (the event in general, we could add), and that is why Joma did not miss the opportunity to be the protagonist in the big event; at the Rio Games it became one of the sports brands with the greatest presence. The Spanish company sponsored a total of ten Olympic committees: Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Bulgaria, Moldova, Morocco, Kyrgyzstan, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Malta, as well as 18 federations from different disciplines.

A total of 17,000 athletes participated in Rio, of which 1,600 wore Joma, a fact that represented almost 10% of the total and forced (willingly) to design and produce more than 10,000 garments. A milestone that could not have been achieved without its new logistics system installed in 2016 at one of the Portillo de Toledo plants; makes it possible to process orders, different garments and sizes, 24 hours a day. Before, Fructuoso and his family did it manually, a system under which it would have been impossible to reach the levels of excellence of the last five years.

In 2018 Joma renewed its sponsorship with many of the major events in which it is involved and began to customize shoes for their races, such as the Movistar Half Marathon in Madrid, the Paris Marathon or the Porto Marathon with the Storm Viper models and SuperCross. Here's a footballing paragraph, another field trodden by those of the J: Do you know who was the first brand in the world to produce boots in a color other than black? Well that. A memory for Alfonso Pérez, the first to wear them (later he hit the running with a good level, by the way).

For the Tokyo Games, Joma will equip the federations of Spain, Mexico, Slovenia, Belarus, Scotland, Georgia, Moldova and Wales, but also the Olympic Committees of Spain, Guatemala, Moldova, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Morocco and Malta, for whom he has designed clothing for walks, parades and podiums. The Spanish athletes will run with a new kit that blends yellow with red to give prominence to the red thread. “The thread is the essence and the point of origin of any garment and it is also an element of union. There is a legend that all soulmates are linked by a red thread that can be bent or stretched but never breaks. They are souls predestined to meet and when they come together they form an inseparable team. It is the best representation of the destiny that was written and that should unite Spanish athletics and the leading Spanish sports brand in the world. This union of more than 12 years is as strong as the red thread”, the members of Joma's communication department explain in a very poetic way.

But this 2021 Joma has not only focused on the Games, but with its tireless work it has managed to find the brand's new model for running marathons in the style of what is claimed in the current market. It is the R3000, which will have a carbon fiber plate and will use the same super light and reactive foam in the midsole as the R5000, the shoe currently used by the brand's athletes to compete and perform series training. .

Joma will continue to be a family business, but also a great brand that, from a small town in Toledo, will continue to dress us, put on shoes and, above all, give us great joy.

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