Nike launched the Andre Agassi signature Air Tech Challenge (or Air Agassi as it was known) midst Agassi mania in 1990. I was eight years old, and it was too much for my infant brain to cope with. I wanted this shoe so much... I don't really know why i felt so strongly about it. In hindsight, it's really a quite revolting colourway and shape-wise it's far from beautiful... But this shoe was something special, and the fact that I never got to wear it still haunts me to this day.
One kid at my school had a pair and I hated him for it... They were just so damn fresh... The only trainers in the entire playground that could be seen from a mile away. My favourite part of the shoe was the spherical (tennis ball) logo on the rear of the heel... wow. My parents refused to buy them for me, I can't blame them, i remember them being expensive, even for a kids' shoe in 1990. But who knows, had I got them, maybe I would have got into tennis like the man Andre Agassi... I could've been more British than Greg Rusedski, and just plain better than Tim Henman... England, it's your loss.
Andre Agassi is the only player to have made me ever take an interest in tennis (um, him and Kournikova). I think it may have been the hair as much as the shoes.
Agassi won Wimbledon in 1992 against Goran Ivanišević, his last major title was the Australian Open in 2005. After divorcing Brooke Shields in 1999, Agassi married follow tennis player Steffi Graf in 2001. She never had her own shoe, and even if she had, it could never have hoped to have been even half as dope as her husband's Nike Air Tech Challenge.
Nike: Please reissue this shoe... please, please, please...
Thanks to www.rareairshoes.com for the top picture.
