‘Air’ hero Sonny Vaccaro coaxed Nike into believing in Michael Jordan

NEW YORK, United States - The hero of the new movie "Air," released this week in the United States, is Sonny Vaccaro, a Nike employee who saw in a young Michael Jordan what "no one else had seen" and convinced the shoe brand to forge a revolutionary partnership.

During a 1984 meeting at Nike headquarters, Vaccaro proposed devoting all the money that Nike had earmarked to recruit future NBA players to one man -- rising sports star Jordan.

"Air," directed by Ben Affleck, traces the chaotic journey that brought about the singing of the barely-out-of-college player, even though Jordan had eyes on Nike's competitors, Converse and Adidas.

Nearly 40 years later, the Nike partnership with Jordan has grown into an empire, with $5.1 billion in sales last year from the Beaverton, Oregon-based company's Jordan Brand alone.

"I saw (in Jordan) something that maybe nobody else saw... and I bet my job that he would be the person," says Vaccaro, now 83, whose position at Nike was, at the time, under threat.

"Michael had something different. He had a killer instinct," Vaccaro says. "He was always competitive. And I don't know of another player that ever came along (like that)."

"The only one that I could put close to Michael and what he did... was Kobe Bryant," says Vaccaro, a multifaceted entrepreneur, businessman and talent scout. "Kobe had the same instincts... the same 'I don't give a damn about anything, I'm going to be the best.'"

In 1996, Vaccaro, who is played by actor Matt Damon in "Air," signed Kobe Bryant to Adidas, his employer at the time. He also came close to recruiting LeBron James to the brand in 2003.

'Paved the way'

Michael Jordan's arrival at Nike transformed the sports industry, revolutionizing both marketing and mass consumption, with billions of dollars at stake.

"That has really paved the way for corporations... to bet big on individual athletes and trend away from the team," says Thilo Kunkel, director of Temple University's Sport Industry Research Center.

Before Jordan, tennis players Stan Smith and Ivan Lendl, as well as basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, had already had their own Adidas models, as had NBA star Walt "Clyde" Frazier at Puma.

"Jordan probably got lucky and benefited from the trends that were happening already but I think he also contributed quite a bit to that trend," Kunkel says. "He accelerated it."

Until then, promotional campaigns were limited to full-page magazine ads and a few radio shows, recalls Vaccaro, who sees the marketing push promoting Jordan as groundbreaking.

"We did national television ads, and Nike made the best ads in the world. They invented it and it all worked out perfect," he says.

The imagery of Air Jordan, the brand created around the player, celebrated a charismatic athlete who was both cool yet fiercely competitive.

The ads were permeated with urban culture, the precursor of the "athleisure" phenomenon, which turned the sports shoe into a fashion accessory to be worn at all times and in all circumstances.

Although he was the linchpin of what remains, without doubt, the largest partnership in the sports industry, generating tens of billions of dollars in revenue, Vaccaro did not benefit financially.

"That's true," he concedes, "but I did okay, we made a good living, whatever. I'm happy with my life."

 Agence France Presse

Paris study: Air pollution tied to higher heart attack risk

Breathing in dirty air may be linked to a higher chance of suffering a heart attack a few days afterward, according to a French analysis of past studies.

Researchers led by Hazrije Mustafic from the Paris Cardiovascular Research Center found that heart attacks were slightly more common at high levels of every main pollutant except ozone, the group reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

They looked at 34 studies comparing the risk of suffering a heart attack, or myocardial infarction, at various levels of inhaling industrial and traffic-related air pollutants including carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and very small soot-like particles.

The reports included anywhere from about 400 to more than 300,000 people, with heart attacks that were confirmed in hospital records and disease and death registries.

"All the main air pollutants, with the exception of ozone, were significantly associated with a near-term increase in myocardial infarction risk," they wrote.

For most of the pollutants, an increase in concentration of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air – the typical standard used to assess harm, and barely noticeable to a person breathing the air – was associated with a one to three percent increase in the chance of having a heart attack in the next week.

"Even if the relative risks are low compared with traditional risk factors such as smoking status or hypertension or diabetes, in fact everybody is exposed to air pollution in industrialized countries," Mustafic told Reuters Health, so even small effects can add up.

When people inhale polluted air, small particles can reach the tiny sacs in the lungs and be carried in the bloodstream to the heart, she said.

Pollutants may also affect blood vessels' ability to expand and contract in order to keep blood pressure constant -- an effect that researchers blame for increasing evidence that high-pollution days are also tied to a person's risk of suffering a stroke.

"If you put together the evidence, clearly day-to-day changes in particle concentration do make a very small but significant difference in terms of increasing susceptibility for cardiovascular events," said Sanjay Rajagopalan, who studies pollution and cardiovascular health at The Ohio State University in Columbus.

"This seems to be particularly so for individuals with pre-existing heart disease," he told Reuters Health, adding that at-risk people should minimize exposure to pollutants as much as possible. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com