At a childrens party this weekend, a 4-year-old walked in wearing blue-and-white Velcro shoes from an unexpected signature athlete.Michael Jordan? Nope. LeBron James? Definitely not. Stephen Curry? Not these.They were Stan Smiths.It has always been a great shoe, Smith told ESPN in an exclusive interview. So clean and simple.How did little Sammy come to be wearing the shoes of a 69-year-old tennis player who was last No. 1 in the world eight years before the childs parents were born? Its thanks to what might be the greatest sneaker revival of all time.Adidas, which has made the sneakers for more than 50 years, now sells Stan Smiths in black, in pink, in blue, in mens, in womens, in kids and infant sizes. There are knit Stans, suede Stans and Stans that are dipped in gold. And if you cant find a pair to your liking, you can go online and customize your own. Youll see them on feet from New York to Tokyo. In its 2014 annual report, Adidas revealed that the Stan Smiths were the companys best-selling shoes of all time, with more than 40 million pairs sold. Buoyed by the Stan Smiths, sales of Adidas Classics in the U.S. are up 60 percent for the first six months of 2016.But Stan Smith -- the tennis player, not the sneaker -- started out as one of those guys who was just at the right place at the right time.In 1965, Adidas made a plain white tennis shoe with green accents for one of the best tennis players in the world at the time, Frenchman Robert Haillet. Unlike other Adidas shoes, it had perforated holes in place of companys iconic three stripes, and it displayed Haillets signature on the side.The shoes were popular at the time, as the leather made it the best performance shoe available, but Adidas thought it had a problem in 1971 when Haillet retired. Horst Dassler, the son of Adidas founder Adi Dassler, reached out to Donald Dell, the former U.S. Davis Cup captain who started a sports agency the year before with two tennis clients: Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith.Dell suggested Smith as a fill-in for the line. Though the ATP and its official rankings system hadnt been created yet, Smith was considered the best player in the world. Horst Dassler took Dells advice and signed Smith to a small, five-year deal. Adidas, judging by the way its executives acted, didnt have much faith that Smith had staying power. Although Smith was the lead endorser, he was wearing a shoe that still had Haillets name on it.I became friends with [Haillet] because of the shoe, Smith said. His son called me when Robert died in 2011. That son had also been upset years earlier, when Adidas took his fathers name off the shoe.That change came in 1978. Adidas put Smiths signature on the tongue of the sneaker for the first time, along with an image of Smith -- that strangely featured him without a mustache.My whole adult life I had one, save for a year [when I was] 23 and 24, Smith said.The signature, which features an S shared by both Stan and Smith, was created with the help of Kathy Andrews, a Delta flight attendant whod met Smith at an autograph signing years before.She thought I had a boring signature, so I did it with one S, Smith said.On the shoe heel, Adidas added another green panel with Smiths full name and the Adidas trident.In the 1980s, as the Stan Smiths started to lose relevance as tennis performance shoes, they started to become popular as fashion shoe. At some point, Smith got used to it.I was at the US Open in the early 90s, he said, and some young man recognized me and told me, Your shoe is really big in the hood.In 2001, his then 14-year-old daughter, Austin, told him he was famous.She told me that Jaysee had put me in his song, said Smith, who rotates through 50 pairs in his own personal collection. I said, Who is Jaysee? She said, No, its Jay Z.She wasnt kidding. Lampin in the Hamptons, the weekends man/The Stan Smith Adidas and the Campus, Jay Z says in a song on his 2001 album The Blueprint. Smith has also been name-checked in songs by A$AP Rocky, Joe Budden, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne, among others.As the shoe found a second life as an iconic element of fashion, Smith earned a flat fee each year until 2005, when Dell was able to convince Adidas officials that Smith deserved more -- a royalty structure paying him for each shoe sold. Neither Dell nor Smith would reveal how much Smith was earning from those sales, but it cant be too shabby given how hot the shoe now is.Im not making Michael Jordan money, Smith said, laughing, referencing the more than $100 million MJ is said to make each year in Nike royalties.In 2011, Adidas executives had a meeting with Smith and Dell. The executives told the pair that they felt the market was crowded and needed a little cleaning up. To that end, they were going to stop producing Stan Smiths for 2012 and 2013.I didnt like that idea, Smith said. But they knew exactly what they were doing.While the Stan Smiths were off the market, people didnt forget about them. In fact, the shoe still generated plenty of buzz, including in 2013, when Gisele Bundchen posed for the cover of Vogue Paris wearing only her Stan Smiths.On Jan. 14, 2014, a day Smith remembers well, the shoes returned to the market with much fanfare. Adidas sent shoes to influencers such as Pharrell Williams and Ellen DeGeneres, replacing Smiths face with the stars own.Absence had indeed made the heart grow fonder.Most strategic plans fail at execution, said Eric Liedtke, head of Adidas global brands. We got this one right.Like young kids who drink an Arnold Palmer today and wonder why a golfer is on the can, people arent buying the shoes because of Stan Smith. But he doesnt mind that Taylor Swift -- who was spotted wearing the shoes in Australia last month -- might not know who he is. Its enough that she was spotted wearing his shoes this summer.I tell my wife that 95 percent of people dont know that Im an actual person, said Smith, who runs an elite tennis program and a corporate hospitality company out of his home base in Hilton Head, S.C. Then she, of course, says the number is closer to 99 percent. 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John Taylor Jersey . -- For the first time in two months, an opponent was standing up to Alabama. Kidambi Srikanth left gallantly. Saina Nehwal hobbled off hurting. The doubles teams of Jwala Gutta & Ashwini Ponappa and Manu Attri & Sumeeth Reddy exited without creating as much as a ripple.Pusarla V Sindhu is the last among them standing. Seven badminton players arrived in Rio, Indias largest ever contingent and only one among them can now return with a medal. On Thursday, Sindhu fronts up against Japans Nozomi Okuhara for a place in the gold medal match in the womens singles. Okuhara sits four places above Sindhu in the world rankings at number six and will present a huge stumbling block to Sindhus aspirations of securing a medal.The Japanese player has been one of the standout performers on the circuit in recent months. She won the season ending World Super series finals in Dubai last December without losing a single game in five matches. This year she has a win-loss record of 21-8, also capturing the All-England open in March, one of the most prestigious tournaments on the circuit. Though she hasnt won a tournament since, at Rio, Okuhara has rediscovered her spark. She won her first three matches comfortably in straight games before being stretched to three by compatriot Yamaguchi Akane in the quarterfinals.Okuhara also holds a 3-1 edge over Sindhu in their head-to-head encounters, although interestingly each of their four matches have been three-game affairs. Sindhu won the first match in 2012 at the Badminton Youth Asia under-19 championships but Okuhara has clinched the last three, including one earlier this year in Sindhus hometown Hyderabad at the Badminton Asia Team championships.For Sindhus coach Pullela Gopichand though, those numbers will have little bearing on the outcome of this contest, with Sindhu playing some of the best badminton of her life over the past week.Sindhu needs to be aggressive and attacking, just the way she has been in the last two matches, says Gopichand. I dont think we need to go by past results, this is a new competition and she is in a positive frame of mind. The Japanese girl likes to engage in long rallies, so we will have to be prepared foor that.ddddddddddddOne of the key factors in the match could be the significant difference in height between the players. Okuhara is a lot shorter at barely 51 whereas Sindhu, at 510 is among the tallest players on the circuit.In the course of this tournament, Sindhu has used her wingspan to great advantage, combining her assured movements with the ability to retrieve shuttles using her reach. However, Sindhu believes that while being taller than her opponents can be an advantage, it can also be an area where she can be targeted.Height is an advantage and a disadvantage, she told ESPN before leaving for the Olympics. It helps you catch up with the shuttle quicker. On the other hand, players have read my game so they dont give me much to attack, since my reach is very good. So they make me play more downward strokes.Over her short career, Sindhu has been dogged by inconsistency, evidenced by her failure to have won a single Super series title yet. However, she does appear to have a penchant for putting together strong runs at big tournaments.She won bronze medals at two consecutive World championships and remains the only Indian to have done so. After a patchy year on the circuit, she has produced a captivating run in Rio, with victories over two higher ranked players in world number two Wang Yihan of China and world number eight?Tai Tzu Ying of Taiwan.She has performed well in big events, and shes performed well when shes had time to prepare well, explains Gopichand. She has been inconsistent a few times and squandered leads but I think thats a part of being so young. She has time and age on her side but she is a great fighter and has a great work ethic.Sindhu described the victory against Yihan as?one of the best moments?of her career adding that she hopes there are many more to come. If she becomes the first Indian badminton player to enter a gold medal round at an Olympics later today, one of those many more she is counting on will have been secured. ' ' '