Shoeless Dunfee: Race walker without shoe deal on heels of Rio Olympics
TORONTO — The orange soles of Evan Dunfee’s shoes were worn through at the toes. They looked like the running shoe version of a tattered ballet slipper.
And they were barely two weeks old.
The Canadian race walker who famously opted not to protest his fourth-place finish at last summer’s Rio Olympics took to Twitter last month to lament the unsightly demise of his shoes.
In better times, he would have just laced on a new pair. But the 26-year-old from Richmond, B.C., was recently dropped from his apparel sponsor Asics, along with several of his Olympic teammates. Under the shoe photo, Dunfee tweeted: “When you’re no longer getting shoes for free u come to realize that you’d like them to last longer than 2 weeks … what are some good shoes?”