ALWAYS Game
Hear the name Umbro and your head goes straight to football. The kits, the boots, the double diamond on the chest — who can blame you? But while the beautiful game might be our one true love, it’s certainly not the only sport we flirted with.
In fact, at times over the past century, our love for sport stretched into almost every game there was.
From tennis aces to track stars, basketballers to boxers and Sunday golfers to eGamers, we decked out countless sports stars in Umbro’s finest — and we have the medals to prove it.
Gold in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics long jump. Gold in the 1968 hurdles. Gold in the 1972 Women’s Pentathlon. The list goes on and on, long enough to fill its own book of records. Yet perhaps our defining chapter was when Roger Bannister ran the first 4-minute mile. Heroic. Iconic. Game-changing. And he did it all in an Umbro singlet.
Off the track, we collaborated with a number of charismatic personalities. Take Teddy Tingling. More than a brilliant name, he played at Wimbledon and was a spy during the Second World War, before settling down to design women’s tennis dresses. His creations were worn by the top players for over three decades, culminating in an appearance in one of the game’s most famous matches: “The Battle of the Sexes”.
There’s also been the more unexpected sports. Rowing, waterpolo, hiking, and, arguably the least anticipated of all, when we swapped sportswear for scoutswear. The Umbro team even took a summer holiday together to test tents during a typically wet Northern summer. If that isn’t love, we don’t know what is.
And yet, in the end, we always came back to football. The teams, the players, the roar of the fans... There’s just something about it. And as our understanding of the game grows year on year, we only fall deeper for the sport which started it all.
Stay tuned for more “Always Umbro” stories dropping very soon on www.umbro.com. You can also keep up to date with this campaign and more on @umbro social media or by searching #AlwaysUmbroSince1924.
