The marketing folks at Sergio Tacchini, the Italian clothing and sportswear designer, buzzed about their offices Monday, feverishly working on a new sales pitch for their footwear.
|  | | As if losing wasn't bad enough .... Hingis' feet now hurt. |
Best idea: "The Shoe That Turned Martina Hingis' Feet Into Hooves."
Second best idea: "Wear These Shoes, Then Call Your Lawyers."
In case you missed it, Hingis hit Sergio in the briefs Monday,
suing the company for designing shoes (that she endorsed for money, it must
be added) that caused foot problems, that in turn caused her career to
duck-hook south.
There is no evidence that this will be brought to a jury, and depending
on the state, any such jury might need legal definitions on arcane legal
points like "endorsement," "fiduciary responsibility," and "foot."
But assuming an average jury of average intellect in an average
jurisdiction argued by average lawyers before an average judge, the central
question seems to be:
"Ms. Hingis, if the shoes felt wrong, why didn't you . . . well, how
can we put this politely ... change them right away?"
A good question, that. Children across the globe, confronted by shoes
that hurt their feet, have traditionally thrown the shoes back at the
offending parent and refused to wear them.
And it should be said that Hingis tried to change them before her deal
with Tacchini blew up in 1999. But it took a good long time, and after all,
in any endorsement deal, the athlete has all the leverage.
Hingis knows that, we suspect. Hingis also knows, we suspect, that an
athlete tends to rely on his or her feet for more than your average
pedestrian. A foot, frankly, is more important that a racket.
But money tends to trump feet on most priority lists. A foot, you see,
suffers from the fact that it looks, well, like a foot. Animals have hooves
because they didn't want anything that looked like a human foot. "Bad enough
we have to chase our food and go to the bathroom in the woods," they said.
"But this ... no way, God. What do you have in the back room?"
Plus, athletes, because of the stress they put upon their pedal
extremities, tend to have feet that look like they lost an argument with a
clawhammer.
So Hingis, then the hottest player on the now-piefight-riddled women's
tennis tour, signed a five-year deal with Tacchini, taking a fair hunk of
money to wear shoes that, by her anticipated testimony anyway, ended up being bad for
her feet.
This isn't the first example of such a thing, mind you. Only most
athletes confronted by such a choice will try to have it both ways. They'll
wear shoes that make their feet feel better, and then have one of the
trainers or equipment slaves color, paint or tape the shoes to make them look
like the shoes they endorse rather than the shoes they wear.
And the shoe companies, who might grouse a bit, take the hint. They
either turn the other way or fix the shoes. More importantly for the athlete,
he or she keeps the money.
Hingis' suit claims that Tacchini wouldn't change the shoes. Well, some
judge somewhere will decide that. Still, some careful subterfuge in advance
might have saved the meal.
Maybe she didn't know the damage the shoes were doing at first, but once
she noticed how her feet would swell to three times their normal size when
she took off her shoes, Tex Avery style, the tipoff came. And when she did
finally complain, you'd have thought that Tacchini would have come up with
the camouflage shoe trick, even if Hingis didn't.
Maybe she thought feet are supposed to do that after three hard sets.
Well, she was in hundreds of locker rooms. Didn't she notice all the players
whose feet didn't look like half-chewed beets?
Eventually, though, she realized that while athletes feet may look like
half-chewed beets, they should never feel that way, which leads us to now,
and a lawsuit that doesn't need to be.
Oh, well. You know what they say about athletes. They live, and we
learn. The lesson is this, and it is one we can all benefit from:
There is no amount of money that can make up for foot comfort ... but
smart folks can get around that, too.
Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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