When the most decorated 100-metre sprinter ever stepped to the line for a final time, she told herself what she knew: that she was prepared, powerful and this race was hers—for her. The next handful of seconds were to honour everything that had brought her to this moment.Green, yellow and black hair whipping behind her—a self-proclaimed "daughter of the soil", who chose to wear the colours of her nation's flag for her final finish—gold-hued&nbsp;nails splayed in front of her, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-celebrates-shelly-ann-fraser-pryce" target="_blank">Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce</a> exploded off the blocks in the World Athletics Championship final in a capacity-filled Japan National Stadium in Tokyo. She ended her 100-metre career in the same way she began racing 18 years ago in Japan—with fierce speed, strength and composure. It was a bold tribute to Jamaica, the nation whose unyielding support has carried her through two decades at the top of the sport.In her decades of dominance—from becoming the first Caribbean woman to win Olympic gold in the 100 metres in 2008, to returning as World Champion in 2019 after giving birth to her son, Zyon—Shelly-Ann has embodied the power of duality.&nbsp;The ability to have longevity in athletics's shortest, most intense discipline; exuding femininity and self-expression in a physically demanding sport; proving motherhood and greatness can coexist.What athletes everywhere, and especially young girls, can take from Shelly-Ann's lead: the courage to run your own race, on your terms. To trust that setbacks don't define you, only your response to them. And the assurance that, if you believe in yourself and work with discipline, harmony is possible. Dreams and family, career and legacy.For that and for the now 276 incredible races and finishing line moments, thank you, Shelly-Ann.Below, go behind the scenes of the GOAT's final meet days in Tokyo.

The shoes. The hair. The finish. At the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Shelly-Ann, a five-time world champion, ended her career her way.

Sofieke van Bilsen is a 29-year-old Dutch photographer with a passion for storytelling through imagery. She is the in-house photographer for the German women's national football team, and was team photographer for the German Olympic Team in Paris 2024. She works closely with Nike athletes such as Faith Kipyegon, Eliud Kipchoge and Sifan Hassan.In her photography, she aims to create compelling visual narratives, focusing on the deep connection between emotion and athleticism. She strives to capture the raw moments behind the scenes, the untold stories of the journey and everything in between, bringing the spirit of sport to life.Sofieke's personality creates instant connections with people, and she is loved by the athletes she works with. Her relaxed and enthusiastic personality complements an incredible skill level and the ability to work in high-pressure environments for athletes.

Sofieke van Bilsen

Photo essay

Icon Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Ran Her Final 100 Metre On Her Terms

Over the course of his career, LeBron James has shared his passion for the game globally, partnering with Nike to travel throughout Greater China during his offseason, galvanizing a nation in its love for basketball and hoops culture. Just as LeBron's career has evolved through different eras, his tours have represented different values over the many times he's visited since 2005. Below are some of his most memorable moments in the country.

2005–2009

LeBron began his debut tour in Beijing in August of 2005. He was invited to watch the awards ceremony of the Nike Battlegrounds tournament, but he'd depart as more than just a spectator. From the moment he stepped down in China, he believed his tour could become a cross-cultural exchange rooted in a shared love of hoops and a mission to inspire the next generation of young players in China. "Basketball is not only a sport, it's also a bridge that connects people", he said.&nbsp;"This is a great learning experience for everyone. I hope I can continue to help grow the game globally and inspire the youth in China to reach their dreams".

LeBron's legacy in China is woven into special China-specific iterations of his signature footwear. In 2007, LeBron James appeared alongside NIKE, Inc.'s then-President & CEO Mark Parker to debut his Nike Zoom LeBron V "China" colourway.

LeBron returned to Beijing in 2009 after his MVP season, where he enjoyed a hero's welcome. As part of his trip, he donated equipment and provided scholarships for the Zhenhua School, a school for the children of migrant workers in suburban Beijing.

To celebrate his season, LeBron was presented with an exclusive pair of the Nike Air Max LeBron VII, featuring a Shenyang-inspired design dubbed "Loyalty" created by the local artist Ray Lei, and a Shanghai-inspired design dubbed "Family", created by the local artist Sic.

2011–2015

LeBron embraced his role as a global ambassador for the game, focusing on the opportunity to inspire China's young players. In 2011, his tour expanded to eight days over four cities, promoting grassroots basketball through a series of skill clinics and tournaments.

In 2012, with a fresh gold medal to pair with his championship ring, LeBron James made a triumphant arrival in Beijing to kick off a four-day tour as part of the&nbsp;Find Your Greatness campaign. "Greatness is defined by how much you want to put into what you do", said LeBron. "Greatness comes with victory. It also comes with being able to come back from adversity".

In 2013, LeBron returned to China with plenty to celebrate: his second straight NBA championship and MVP awards for both the regular season and the Finals.

In 2014, LeBron James was the first mentor to announce the roster for the Nike RISE, designed to help players raise their competitive game and improve their skill.

In 2015, Nike RISE 2015 evolved with LED Courts and motion-tracking drills to create a pinnacle training experience, teach the fundamentals of basketball and push the boundaries of sports training.

An emotional finale saw four players chosen to represent China at the World Streetball Championships.

2016–2019

After winning another NBA title in 2016, LeBron entered Guangzhou to a massive championship parade, the streets flanked by tens of thousands of fans, many of them in Cavs #23 jerseys. It was a signal for just how widely James's legacy had expanded throughout Asia.&nbsp;His More Than an Athlete campaign inspired young players to see basketball as one of many tools for affecting social change.

After a warm welcome from thousands of fans, he spent most of his time in Beijing working out with and coaching members of the Chinese Junior National basketball team.

Visiting primary schools throughout Beijing, LeBron shared his personal basketball experiences with young athletes, emphasising the role that hard work, dedication and self-belief played in his path to success.

In 2018, the first day of his "More Than an Athlete" tour in Shanghai began with a panel discussion with students at the Shanghai Theatre&nbsp;Academy, and ended with a park shootaround. Hundreds of fans gathered outside the court to watch him play, hoping to catch a glimpse of the icon.

This month, LeBron flew to China for his "Forever King Tour", his 15th in the country and marking the 20th anniversary of tours in Asia. There, he joined some of the world's most passionate hoopers and basketball fans, reiterating his commitment to giving back to the game across the world.

Over the course of his career, LeBron James has shared his passion for the game globally, partnering with Nike to travel throughout Greater China during his offseason, galvanizing a nation in its love for basketball and hoops culture.

Journey of an icon: 20 years of LeBron James in China

Hours of powering up steep ascents and navigating gnarly descents. Whipping mountain winds, glaring direct sun and biting evening temps. Getting mentally right with the fact that the next aid station is far, far away. Ultra trail running can sound like a gruelling, relentless sport reserved for the wildest, most hardcore athletes among us.According to our <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-acg-all-conditions-racing-department" target="_blank">All Conditions Racing Department</a> runners—six of whom just conquered pinnacle UTMB races across the French, Italian and Swiss Alps, on trails spanning 15 to 174 kilometres, with elevation gains of 1,200 to nearly 10,000 metres—the grit, determination, joy and freedom trail running gives you are worth every ounce of work. See for yourself.

<h3>ROSS GOLLAN</h3>Race: Experience Trail Courmayeur (ETC); 15K with 1,200m elevation gain Global finish rank: 29th

<h3>MARIE NIVET</h3>Race: ETC; 15K with 1,200m elevation gain Global women's finish rank: 7th

CESARE MAESTRIRace: ETC; 15K with 1,200m elevation gain Global finish rank: 2nd

<h3>BAPTISTE COATANTIEC</h3>Race: Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB); 174K with nearly 10,000m elevation gain Global finish rank: 11th

<h3>ANTHONY COSTALES</h3>Race: Courmayeur—Champex—Chamonix (CCC); 101K with more than 6,050m elevation gain Global finish rank: 15th

<h3>DREW HOLMEN</h3>Race: CCC; 101K with more than 6,050m elevation gain Global finish rank: 3rd

Powering up steep ascents. Navigating gnarly descents. Whipping mountain winds. Ultra trail running is a relentless sport. But the payoff is well worth the grind.

Ultra trail running can take everything you've got—and give you even more

On the raucous machinery floor of Nike's Air Manufacturing Innovation facility, a group of engineers study an inflated Air Max unit prototype. Its shape is stunningly technical. This "clover" unit, the visual cue that would later become the flowering, minimalist Air bag for the new <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-liquid-max-merges-superior-comfort-and-air-max-heritage" target="_blank">Nike Air Liquid Max</a>, is curved to help the wearer glide from each step to the next. The ride is meant to be incomparably smooth.&nbsp;But there's a catch. The unique shape of the bag is so complex it needs a lot of special attention. It's the first Max unit to include internal cut-outs. The trim, or the perimeter of the bag, is complicated to get right. Air Max engineers have a word to describe Air: elastomeric. It means that Air has the ability to transform based on changing variables like temperature and humidity. As soon as you introduce more complexity to the shape of a filled Air bag, the harder it is to cut it to a precise shape over and over again across a full size run. Think of a cookie-cutter mould. The more complicated the shape, the greater the margin for error when you slice the dough. Now imagine that dough is curved upward. That's the case for this Max Air bag, and any dip or rise in room temperature can make the bag change shape ever so slightly.&nbsp;What's more, the same design has to be replicated hundreds of thousands of times.&nbsp;High complexity. High precision. All in a minimalist silhouette meant to feel like the most nothing Max ever.&nbsp;

What does it mean to walk on Nike Air? There's the comfort, obviously. Every step should feel effortless. Then there's the unmistakable look, beginning with the Air Max I in 1987, when the big see-through bubble was actually a prism into the future of shoe cushioning. But Nike Air could never just be a platform built on inspiration. It needed to be built on technical rigour to give a precisely tuned feeling.&nbsp;While the evocation of "walking on air" is easy, creating it is anything but.

The silhouette was originally briefed in 2019 and tag-lined "The Most Nothing Max". The goal was to create an Air Max that felt light, fluid, flexible and barely detectable—a goal that's historically been at odds with the platform.

In an Air Max legacy that was founded on the big bubble, designers wondered whether an Air Max unit could, should, feel like nothing. A filled Air bag, when combined with layers of cement foam and rubber, can come across as rigid and slappy, making it challenging to feel a smooth step-to-step transition.&nbsp;"Liquid Max had to set a new visual precedent, but the Air unit also had to give a new sensation for walking on Air", says Ditte Kuijpers, design director, Nike Sportswear Innovation Footwear. "People needed to both feel and see how it was different. Every component of the shoe had to work together for this to happen".

To begin, designers and engineers discussed how this unit would break from Air Max models of the past. A few key descriptions stood out as inspiration: sleek. Reductive. Minimalist. The Air Max unit had to be lighter and more flexible than previous models. When Nike designers began conceptualising this sleeker unit, one source came from an unlikely place: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-max-scorpion-official-images-release-date" target="null">Air Max Scorpion</a>. Released in 2021, it was maximalist in the truest sense, featuring an enormous unit shaped by ambitious proportions. It was the largest unit ever created in terms of volume of Air per square inch. One observation stood out from designing the Scorpion bag: its emphasis on a term called "point loading". This is when each area of cushioning is precisely mapped against the entirety of your foot, comfortably spreading your bodyweight out on certain points of the bag. Each part of the Air unit can have a different stiffness or softness.&nbsp;

"Scorpion gave the team a good starting point", says Wade Flanagan, director of Nike Air Innovation. "We learned new techniques that could help us tune the bag for flexibility across different zones. Comparing the Scorpion bag to Liquid Max, we wanted to make something lighter, more flexible, more minimalist, but just as responsive".But cutting the bags to achieve this effect is complicated, says Flanagan. Each Air bag almost has a mind of its own because of how it can change in the slightest of circumstances. Trimming each one perfectly, he says, is like hitting a moving target.

The silhouette's name shifted to Liquid Max for good reason: the unit had to move with a undetectably smooth transition, like liquid. One of the designers' early prototypes used a modified version of the Air Max Dn8's Air units, a row of pressurised tubes across the full length of the foot. To create a more contoured system that worked with the foot, and to reduce the number of parts in the shoe, designers experimented with different versions of a drop-in midsole.Some prototypes of the Air unit were more organic. Others were more industrial. Some shapes tried turning visual details into mechanical advantages. Could a sly spelling of "Air Max" on the outsole create a trampoline-like effect through the middle of the letters? The possibilities were wide open. Testing wasn't limited to the physical world, either. A digital method called Finite Element Analysis, or FEA, helped designers simulate the real-life forces of a person walking in the shoe, putting pressure on different regions of the unit and then measuring how it responded.&nbsp;

This testing through trial and error helped designers and engineers land on a beautiful, two-chambered, full-length Air unit design. Maybe its most noticeable shift from Air units of the past was also its most challenging on a technical level: cutting out inserts in the bag; coring out unnecessary parts in the middle; and moulding it in a curved, rockered shape to make it more minimalist. Trimming a unit this complicated inside and out, on a curve? It hadn't been done before. It would require a more precise kind of Air manufacturing.&nbsp;

The Liquid Max team began working closely with the technicians at Nike's Air Manufacturing Innovation (Air MI) facilities in Beaverton, Oregon. There was basically no margin for error. Cut the bag at a poor angle, and the bag can pop. Cut it too wide, and you leave behind messy, awkward flanges around the perimeter. A dynamic ingredient like Air is also highly sensitive to the environment around it, meaning the bag can change shape in an instant based on the indoor temperature, resulting in inconsistent sizes. Air unit manufacturing is the equivalent of baking the world's coolest soufflé.

The final version of the Liquid Max Air unit is what happens when bold creativity meets manufacturing ingenuity. And the strategies employed to make the Air unit go beyond any single shoe."The Liquid Max unit is an example of when our designers, engineers and Air MI technicians set their sight on a challenge and overcome it", says Flanagan. "A lot of that comes from being inspired to challenge limitations and push Air Max to a new place so we can provide new benefits to people who wear it".

Nike Air Liquid Max is the first Max unit to include internal cut-outs. It ushers in an era for the Air Max franchise where precision and complexity go hand in hand.

Explore Nike, Converse and Jordan footwear and apparel design stories featuring Nike Air Force 1, Nike Air Jordan, Nike Air Max and more.

Design

Making it

Less Is Max In the Newest Version of Nike Air

About Nike—stories from inside NIKE, Inc.

For Yao Miao, becoming the "Queen of Trail Running" in China took everything she had. Yao grew up in a small farming village in China's Guizhou Province, the youngest of six daughters. She often helped her parents, working long hours in the rice fields, but even as a child she knew she wanted to pursue a future outside of her rural community. That opportunity came in middle school. Yao left home when she was selected as one of four students from her area to attend a state-run sports school for future elite athletes. The early days were tough. Leaving her family wasn't easy, and she often felt lonely and homesick. Her body struggled to adapt to a kind of training she had never done before. But it was there that she discovered her passion for trail running.Overtime, her natural resilience paid off. She pushed through injuries and setbacks to become Asia's first three-time Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) Finals champion, one of the most celebrated trail-running races in the world.Now, as she joins the ACG <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-acg-all-conditions-racing-department" target="null">All Conditions Racing Department</a>, ACG's roster of elite trail running athletes, Yao looks back on where her journey began, the victories and challenges along the way and how her ACG partnership will help reach a new generation of athletes.

My hometown helped shape me into an elite athlete. There are many small mountains, and I played there when I was young, so I grew used to that terrain. That experience helped me become a strong trail runner. I really enjoy running in China's mountain environments, especially running on the Great Wall.It's important to know that you don't have to reach your goals immediately. At sport school, I focused mainly on running and was part of an organised team. But after graduating in 2016, I was not chosen to join a professional team or university. So, I started working. I handed out flyers at a gym, then I helped my sister at her makeup shop. I felt lost. I wasn't training like an athlete anymore.I wasn't interested in anything but running. Eventually, that rejection was motivating for me. I had the opportunity to enter a trail race. While I didn't finish, that failure to finish made me feel I needed to come back to trail running. My goal was to become the best trail runner of all time. I made up my mind to keep working and continue racing. I believed I could succeed and I wanted to prove it.One of my most challenging races was in 2019 at UTMB. During the 168km run, I had a period where I lost my vision. I was racing so much that my body couldn't bear the strain of so many competitions. I couldn't finish the race, and the organisers asked me to quit. I was very nervous because I worried I might never see again and not be able to return to trail running. The vision loss was only temporary, but I felt like I was losing confidence in the sport.

Getting my footing in trail running took time, but that journey was so rewarding. After my first championship in 2018, I knew I had the talent and motivation to become an elite trail runner. I kept chasing another win but couldn't seem to get one. I struggled in 2019 with several DNFs and stopped racing in 2020. But I still had this intense passion for the sport, so I came back in 2023. I finally won again in 2024, the OCC-UTMB, which was my most satisfying victory. I was back! The hard work paid off, and I felt like I could finally move forward.For me, the most important mindset is love for the sport. I've faced many challenges, but because I love trail running, I've been able to keep going and become who I am today.

I want trail runners to think about how their actions affect the environment. Trail running is becoming popular very quickly. However, many runners still don't think enough about protecting their environment. I encourage runners to care for the outdoors and our planet—stay on marked trails, carry out their trash properly, respect the wildlife. Protecting these spaces is part of being a responsible runner. I know it's not easy to educate everyone, but I can start with myself and help model good behaviour. Last year, I helped organise events focused on environmental protection and I hope, in the future, more people will join me.I know how much I can do with ACG to build my dream and support the next generation. I'm proud to launch the Nike-supported "Boundless Girls with Yao Miao" initiative that will help more girls in many Chinese primary and secondary schools access sports. I want to inspire teenage girls who grow up in underdeveloped areas like I did to find their confidence and know that the world is vast. Sport has the power to open new doors for them.

Her rise from rural China to three‑time UTMB Finals champion—and now member of the ACG All Conditions Racing Department—is a story of endurance, belief and relentless dedication to the sport.

For the win

Trail Runner Yao Miao Is Running Down New Goals With ACG

Editor's Picks

Story Landing

What would the back of your athletic trading card say? That's what Nike's Baseline testing is for: a way for all athletes to understand their physical tools.What It DoesNike's Baseline testing, made up of five assessments, is as foundational as it sounds. The assessments are borrowed from the worlds of biomechanics, physiotherapy and exercise science, and can be completed in a matter of minutes: a 3D body scan, a foot scan, a barefoot pressure test, an ankle range of motion test and countermovement jumps. In many ways, Baseline is the most ubiquitous tool that the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) offers. Every professional athlete who visits the NSRL has the option of doing the testing, no matter their itinerary. But that doesn't mean it's a resource that's exclusive to a precious few. Baseline is the one test series in the NSRL that's also open to every Nike employee.Considered together, the test results form the baseline of a person's athletic profile—how powerful they are, how mobile they are, how explosive they are and other traits. Knowing these attributes gives Nike researchers, scientists and designers a clearer picture of how to serve an athlete's needs.

Baseline helps provide foundational knowledge of an athlete's body, connecting anatomical structure, foot and lower-body mechanics and functional movement.

The three-dimensional foot scale measures foot shape during normal standing. The reported sizing can be a starting point for shoe or product fit.

Barefoot walking helps asses areas of high and low pressure underfoot. Seeing these areas of elevated pressure can help uncover an athlete's gait pattern.

Range of motion in the ankles and the toes, tested in different directions, can help determine joint function.

Performance jumps can be an indication of lower-body strength, power and asymmetry.

Data from Baseline testing goes beyond describing an athlete's current state. It can also shed light on an athlete's past, like what sport they played or what injuries they sustained.

What It Helps Us DoJackie Shea, Baseline operator, Innovation, says Nike researchers selected each of the&nbsp;Baseline tests to set an experiential, diagnostic tone for every athlete interaction within the NSRL. Before the opening of the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/inside-the-nike-sports-research-lab-lebron-james-innovation-center" target="null">LeBron James Innovation Center</a> in October 2021, athlete engagement in the lab was largely reserved for testing footwear and apparel prototypes. There's nothing wrong with that, says Shea, a former D1 athlete who studied kinesiology and exercise science. But that process largely treats the athlete as a test pilot secondary to the vehicle—the product—they are steering. "We wanted Baseline to help bring athletes to the centre of the lab, distinct from product", she says.&nbsp;Through their Baseline results, athletes can see nuances in their athletic profile. Are you geared towards slower endurance or more explosive power? Your vertical jump results might point you towards an answer. Does your anatomy from the 3D body scan suggest you have any imbalances in your proportions? These results are valuable to athletes for their own sake. You don't need to test a product to gain a better awareness of your own body.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

After guiding more than 4,000 athletes through Baseline, Shea has learned to spot trends in physical profiles among different sports while offering remedies via other Nike tools. For example, runners tend to have weak posterior strength, so in their back, glutes and hamstrings. They stand the most to gain from consistent weight training, provided in the hundreds of workouts from the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.nike.com/ntc-app" target="_blank">Nike Training Club App</a>. Athletes who play lateral sports, like basketball, tend to have limited mobility, so a Nike yoga class at a nearby store might be just what they need to balance out.Key to Shea's job is a fair amount of myth-busting when discussing test results. An athlete might comment on how running hurts their knees, but when they test their ankle mobility, the athlete grimaces, looking stiff as a board. They test their gait on <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-nsrl-form" target="_blank">NSRL Form</a>—a recent addition to the test line-up—and are clearly overstriding. With each step, most of their force is displaced through their knees and their back instead of transferred evenly through their body. Running doesn't hurt their knees—the way they run hurts their knees. Baseline results help give athletes a course of action for what troubles them the most.&nbsp;

Baseline does play a role in ensuring that Nike researchers test products efficiently and orient them towards real solutions. For example, Baseline results are a common way for NSRL researchers to recruit for new studies. An athlete with strong results in explosive vertical jumping power is an ideal fit for a future basketball jumping study that tests a new hoops silhouette. A distance runner, on the other hand, might find a steady-state treadmill run in the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-sport-research-lab-environmental-chambers" target="_blank">climate chambers</a> a better match, which in turn can help scientists evaluate the latest sweat-wicking material innovations like <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-aero-fit-official-images" target="null">Aero-FIT</a>. As more and more athletes do Baseline, the lab's research specificity gets sharper and sharper. The same is true for product development.&nbsp;That process is ongoing. A Baseline evaluation is never the end of the story. It's the beginning of a conversation.&nbsp;"Baseline creates relationships with athletes that aren't passive, but active", says Shea. "The conversations between athletes and their test results are in a constant cycle with each other. One of my favourite parts in this job is getting to ask follow-up questions. You're showing some imbalance between your left-leg power and your right leg. Did you have some kind of injury to your leg early on? Tell me more. There's always more to every athlete's story".

What would the back of your athletic trading card say? That's what the NSRL's Baseline testing is for: a way for all athletes to understand their physical tools.

Sport science

Next Level

The NSRL Baseline Testing

25 January 1964. Saturday.The Beatles registered their first number-one hit song in the United States: "I Want to Hold Your Hand".And on a cold, rainy day in Portland, Oregon, a coach and his former athlete met for lunch at the Cosmopolitan Hotel to discuss a possible business partnership.One hour later, Phil Knight and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/bill-bowerman-nike-s-original-innovator" target="_blank">Bill Bowerman</a> stood, reached across the table and shook hands. Blue Ribbon Sports was born.To understand how two Oregonians arrived at that moment—and why it held—we have to go back a decade, to a teenager who had just been cut from baseball.

The Beginning

Phil Knight grew up in Southeast Portland and went to Cleveland High. As he tells it, he was the last cut on the sophomore-and-under baseball team—a decision that stung."I was heartbroken but my mum said, 'You are not going to mope around the house. You're either going to get a paper route or go out for track'. Well, that was easy. I went out for track".That decision set him on a course that would change his life, and, eventually, the sports world.Knight tried out for athletics and quickly found his stride. While he was physically smaller than his teammates, he was fast, competitive and willing to work.At one early meet, his father, William, a labour lawyer who would later become publisher of the Oregon Journal, introduced him to Oregon athletics coach Bill Bowerman. The two older men had attended the University of Oregon together. That day was his first introduction to the coach who would later shape his life.By then, Knight was already starting to win and place in local races, enough to earn a name in Oregon's competitive prep scene. During his junior year, he spotted a headline that stuck with him: Bill Dellinger, a runner from the University of Oregon, who had just won the mile at the national championships under Bowerman's coaching."It was startling", Knight said. "It was a huge headline in The Oregonian and that's when I became aware of Bill Bowerman and what a phenomenal programme he had".

The Hamburger of Runners

Although small and lean, Knight never let size hold him back. In 1955, he played on Cleveland's city-championship basketball team, finished second in the league 880-yard (805-metre) run and took fourth at the state meet. By autumn, he'd earned a spot on Bowerman's athletics and cross-country teams at the University of Oregon.Long before his first practice, though, his father had already turned to Bowerman for guidance—an early glimpse of the connection that would define both men's careers. Curious to get the coach's perspective on whether Phil should attend university or join the military, William Knight wrote to him that autumn.Bowerman replied with his trademark mix of bluntness and care."My first concern is for your young man's education", he wrote. "All will not be fun and frolic. It takes hard work for success in anything … it is a privilege to have your son here, also a responsibility for me, for you and for him".

Like many freshmen before him, Knight soon learned what that meant, struggling under the bombastic Bowerman. "After my freshman year, I had to sit down with myself and ask if I was going to go back to that crazy man, or not", Knight recalled. "I realised if I go back, I'm just going to have to do things his way because he's not going to change. So, I went back".That decision proved pivotal. Bowerman saw potential in Knight—not&nbsp;as a star runner but as an ideal test subject. "I wasn't one of the best runners on the team", Knight admitted. "Bowerman knew he could use me as a guinea pig without much risk".He called Knight the "hamburger" of runners—hearty stock, forgiving, determined—and began using him to test early shoe prototypes. In August 1958, Bowerman sent Knight a letter outlining his summer training plan and added a postscript, "If you have a pair you think would make good flats, send them down. They'll be ready when school starts".The pair Knight received that autumn featured an experimental white, rubber-coated fabric—"the kind you'd use for a tablecloth you could sponge off", Bowerman later said. They were crude, functional and a glimpse of what was coming. The coach was still years from finding a manufacturing partner, but his drive to build a faster, lighter shoe had already found its first willing tester.

From Athletics to Business

By the time Knight graduated from Oregon in 1959 with a degree in business, his competitive drive had shifted from athletics to the classroom. The next stop was Stanford, where he enrolled to pursue his MBA.At first, his path seemed uncertain. But during his final year, a class called "Small Business Management" caught his attention. It was a class that would quietly spark the idea of a lifetime."It was the only entrepreneurship class, so it was one of the classes that I was most interested in", Knight said.&nbsp;He developed a strong rapport with his professor, Frank Shallenberger, who assigned the students a simple but open-ended project: invent a new business, define its purpose and create a marketing plan to support it.Knight had recently overheard a conversation among photographers at the Oregon Journal, where he'd worked summers during university. They were talking about a surge of inexpensive Japanese cameras that were starting to rival the more powerful and costly German models."Electronics was a popular topic at that time and the smart kids chose to write about things like that", Knight said. "But I didn't know anything about electronics, so I wrote about something that I did know about—shoes".Drawing from his experience as one of Bill Bowerman's wear-testers, he built his hypothetical company. By 1962, German sports shoes were on the rise in the US—high quality, yes, but expensive. Knight saw an opening.He turned the idea into a paper he wrote almost literally overnight with a single bold hypothesis: Can Japanese sports shoes do to German sports shoes what Japanese cameras did to German cameras?Knight argued that Japanese-made running shoes could compete on both price and quality with the dominant German brands. Knight received an "A". When the assignment was over, he couldn't shake the idea. "I wrote a letter of enquiry to virtually every Japanese shoemaker that I could find".Only one company replied: the Kow Hoo Shoe Company of Hong Kong. The letter, written in imperfect English, was polite but discouraging."It is with regret to inform you that due to lack of [such] equipment and material, we can hardly manufacture [such] type of shoes and trust that every shoemaker in Hongkong (sic) fails in doing so. We are expert in manufacturing golf shoes, skating boots and bowling shoes, etc.".It wasn't the answer Knight had hoped for, but it didn't matter. A seed had been planted that would soon take root.Shaken but not deterred, he was about to face the opportunity of a lifetime.That story—and more—will come in future Department of Nike Archive features on The Record.

Born of need and elevated by expertise and diligence, today the Department of Nike Archives (DNA) cares for hundreds of thousands of artefacts and a limitless vault of connected stories.&nbsp;The brand archive began organically in the 1970s and officially became DNA in 2006. The department's purpose is to both preserve and accelerate the ever-evolving and interconnected story of Nike. "Knowing who you are and the fights you've come through can do huge things for morale, inspiration and creativity. That's what DNA provides". - Phil Knight

Department of Nike Archives

Go behind the scenes of the famous business deal between Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman—co-founders of Nike.

History

The Handshake That Started It All

Designer Melitta Baumeister has built a reputation for turning the everyday into something extraordinary. Her work blurs the line between fashion and sculpture—exaggerated silhouettes, hand-shaped materials and unexpected textures that seem to hold movement inside them.Since launching her namesake label in 2013, the New York—based fashion innovator has become one of the most distinct voices in contemporary design, earning recognition from the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund.Now, she's bringing that sculptural approach to Nike. On 29 October, Baumeister will debut an experiential performance and installation in New York City, the first chapter in a long-term collaboration with the brand. Taking Nike's Vomero Premium as her starting point, she reimagines the shoe's colour—and so much more, creating an expressive study of movement and perception. The result is part artwork, part experiment and fully human in its perspective.For Melitta, the concept "Run Like No One" became the collaboration's emotional core. It's a message about rediscovering joy in motion; about moving for yourself, not for applause or perfection. Each sneaker in the series carries that same philosophy: subtle variations, layered colour and evidence of the maker's touch.As she explains, the project isn't about creating heroes, it's about exploring honesty in motion, an idea that mirrors her own practice of experimentation and process. Here, Melitta shares how her Nike collaboration came together and why imperfection, realism and play may be the most powerful design tools of all.

How did you approach reinterpreting the Nike Vomero?When Nike asked me to come up with a new colourway for the Vomero, my first reaction was: we need to find a different way to work with it other than simply exchanging one colour for the other. The performance aspect of the Vomero was an additional inspiration. We needed movement and something unexpected—a shift away from the intimidating perfection of a pristine sneaker toward one that engages people on multiple levels in surprising ways.My team and I have taken the idea of "built for movement" seriously, and instead of being stuck behind screens, we worked on it as we would on our sculptural dresses, using our hands and working directly with real materials. The outcome is a hand-painted sneaker, each one slightly different from the other. That's what the audience will notice first when encountering the Vomero: the layers of graphics and storytelling that reveal themselves on closer inspection. I love this aspect of engagement from different distances and angles. It gives depth and more space for the audience to explore and experience it.&nbsp;

What first drew you to fashion as a form of expression?&nbsp;For as far back as I can remember, I had a feeling that clothing can affect our lives and the way we feel. I was always drawn to people that used clothing not only to express their personality but also to help build that identity. This is where my love for fashion took root.I knew from a young age that I wanted to make clothes for a living, probably around 14. I grew up in a small city where there wasn't much fashion around. My mum introduced me to a fashion designer who was visiting, telling me that she was "changing lives by dressing people". That stuck with me. Growing older, I understood what she meant. Changing someone's identity or being part of someone's identity was fascinating to me.&nbsp;How did your own experience with running shape the concept for this performance?Movement has always been essential in my daily and creative life, but finding the time and motivation while running a growing business has become a bigger challenge than running faster or farther. Knowing that this is the reality for most of my customers made it a good starting point for this collaboration in general and the performance in particular. What I love about running is the way it changes your perception of time and space. It's like exploring familiar surroundings in a new way. Places start connecting to thoughts, which then become memories, and the rhythm is in your body, not the stopwatch. Running is a powerful tool for creativity.From the very beginning, the performance gives a good insight into how we approach projects. Instead of arriving with a rigid idea that needs to be squeezed into any space, we visit different locations and look for their specific character, which we love to integrate into our concept. It's like running on a treadmill versus through the city. I prefer the spontaneity and unpredictability to the preplanned and controlled. For our performance in New York, this meant utilising all the "hidden" parts of the location that would usually be used only as storage or back of house. In fact, that's how the performance starts, and how we enter the building. What follows is a succession of moments that meander between humorous surrealism and surprising realism.

You grew up in Germany and built your label in New York. Do those two places show up in your work today?Definitely, especially when it comes to work ethic. I think growing up in Germany, there's this constant drive to improve, to not settle, to always push something further. There's a kind of built-in restlessness. Germans are often not easily satisfied and I see that in how I approach my work. It's always about questioning, refining, evolving.What story or feeling did you want this performance to capture?We wanted to create an experience that feels intimate and honest, stepping into the inner world of someone who doesn't identify as a runner and watching that shift happen. It's not about perfection or becoming a hero. It's about the private, sometimes quiet journey towards movement.I hope people feel something familiar when they walk through it. It's about running for yourself, not for anyone else. That's what "Run Like No One" means to us.

Melitta Baumeister has built a reputation for turning the everyday into something extraordinary—blurring the line between fashion and sculpture with pieces that seem to hold movement inside them. Now, she's bringing that sculptural approach to Nike.

Welcome to the family

5 Questions With Fashion Designer Melitta Baumeister

A neuroscientist, a computational engineer and an industrial designer sit at a desk, poring over the latest electroencephalography (EEG) and pressure-mapping results. Down the corridor, pressure plates respond to steady footsteps while motion-capture sensors blink to life as another round of testing begins.This isn't a scene from a NASA work room or sci-fi Hollywood blockbuster—it's a typical day at the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/lebron-james-innovation-center-nike-sport-research-lab" target="_blank">LeBron James Innovation Center</a> and its top-floor Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL), where dozens of scientists, engineers and designers come together to study every element of human performance.&nbsp;While many people know this facility exists, few understand the full scope of its work, or that the research extends beyond the physical and into the mind itself. Led by world-renowned neuroresearchers, Nike's Mind Science team is devoted to exploring how the brain and body interact to shape the future of athletic performance.

Their latest breakthrough, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-mind-001-mind-002-official-images" target="_blank">Nike Mind</a>, is a sensory footwear platform more than a decade in the making that aims to redefine how athletes prime for and recover from competition.&nbsp;We sat down with seven Nike Mind teammates to learn how this long-awaited technology moved from concept to reality.

THE NEURAL ARCHITECT: GRAEME MOFFAT, PHD Principal researcher, Nike Sport Research Lab As principal researcher on Nike's Mind Science team, Graeme Moffat leads the neuroscience behind Nike Mind—decoding EEG readouts, pressure maps and muscle signals to understand how sensation shapes focus and performance. With a background in brain-computer interface research, he's helping to translate the science of perception into design principles that can be felt underfoot. For Moffat, this project isn't just about a new shoe. It's about proving how the mind and body can be trained together through sensation.One of the easiest ways to get out of your head is to get into your body—to actively engage your senses. With Nike Mind, what we see in the brain is increased activity in the sensory motor network and a rise in alpha oscillations linked to relaxed alertness.&nbsp;Like your hands, the bottom of your feet have unique skin with 10 to 20 times more mechanoreceptors than most other areas. These are the parts of our body to feel and navigate the world. To complement this, each node in Nike Mind moves independently, shifting slightly to translate force through the bottom of the foot. The result is a more direct connection to the ground.We used sensory science to determine the placement of the 22 nodes. By measuring what's called the two-point discrimination threshold—how far apart touches have to be before you feel them as separate—we were able to map the density of receptors across the foot. That's why nodes are more closely spaced in the forefoot and wider apart in the heel.We used everything: underfoot plantar-pressure sensors, electromyography of the lower limbs and human EEG. Athletes walked in the shoes and comparator models while we measured their brains before, during and after. What we saw were clear differences in brain activation and oscillation patterns, signals that reflected how the sensory system in this shoe was activating the brain. This is a completely new way to make footwear, designed from the sensory system outwards. It took nearly 10 years of research and iteration to make it work.It is incredible technology. It's like a walking anti-fatigue mat built into my shoes. It's just a fantastic feeling. I don't want to take them off at the end of the day.The Mind Science team itself is unique. We have neuroscientists, perception researchers, physiologists and engineers all working together. It's a mix of disciplines that normally don't sit inside a company like Nike, and it allows us to move from deep scientific insight to real product innovation quickly. We can prototype, test with athletes and iterate at a pace no one else can. It's a capability that sets Nike apart.

THE BRAIN MAPPER: TREVOR BARSS, PHD Lead researcher, Mind Science team Working alongside Moffat, Trevor Barss helped run the early neuroscience studies that defined Nike Mind's foundation. A sensory neuroscientist specialising in neurophysiology, he used EEG and other measures to study how tactile feedback changes patterns of brain activity, the signals linking movement, focus and awareness. The team's findings revealed distinct shifts in sensory-motor activation and alpha rhythms when athletes wore Nike Mind footwear, insights that continue to shape how the NSRL explores the mind-body connection.For the first 45 years, Nike's research focused on the body from the neck down. The next 45 will include the brain.&nbsp;My role was to study unique aspects of brain activation while athletes were wearing the footwear. We measured electrical activity in the brain before, during and after movement and paired that with perception data. The goal was to connect what athletes reported feeling with what we could actually see happening neurologically.We found that this collaboration between perception and neuroscience is what gives the work its power. You might detect increased activation in one region of the brain, but without understanding the athlete's experience, you don't know whether that's good or bad. When you combine both, you get meaning.When I first arrived at Nike, I was amazed by the environment. In most research settings, if you want to talk to an expert outside your field, you email, you schedule, you wait. Here, I can walk three desks over and have a conversation with someone who is a world-class expert in biomechanics, physiology or materials science. That proximity accelerates everything.The strength of this lab is its seamless flow of expertise. Neuroscientists, engineers, designers and developers work side by side, testing, iterating and learning from each other in real time. It removes silos and sparks ideas that none of us could reach alone.We're at the starting line of an entirely new field. The methods are established, but applying them to footwear and apparel is uncharted territory. Each experiment raises new questions.For me, the most inspiring part is being surrounded by brilliant minds who share that curiosity. When you pair deep scientific expertise with creative-design thinking, you open doors to discoveries that redefine what performance can mean.Looking ahead, the possibilities are endless. We have sensory receptors all over our body. Anytime you change sensory input, you're interacting with your nervous system. Delving into that connection could open up whole new ways of supporting athlete awareness, focus and recovery.

THE ENGINEERING WHIZZ: ELIZABETH RAISSIAN Senior director, Performance Engineering Inside Nike's Performance Engineering Lab, Elizabeth Raissian's work lies at the intersection of product functionality and code. For Nike Mind, she and her team built the digital framework that made the concept manufacturable at scale, using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and simulation tools to model how each node, flex point and pressure zone behaves underfoot. Their modelling ensured a precisely tuned sensorial design that delivers consistent feel and feedback across every size and stride.The big unlock was using computational methods to crack the scale challenge. Nike Mind has many small parts within a larger system. We wrote scripts that determined where each node needed to be for athlete performance and how those placements could still be manufactured consistently.Our goal was to make sure every athlete has the same experience no matter their shoe size. We used FEA to test variables like node size, height and material. That helped us identify the sweet spot between too much and not enough sensation. Once we had that, we could scale it proportionally across sizes so the product felt consistent from end to end.For me, this has been a dream job I didn't know existed. I get to combine tough technical work with the creativity of working alongside designers, sports researchers and other specialists. After 23 years, I still haven't been bored.What excites me most is how fast the tools are evolving. We've built a strong foundation and now new technologies are coming in that let us do things we wouldn't have thought possible a decade ago. It changes how we approach products and opens doors for the future.

THE BRIDGE BUILDER: SEAN LU Footwear developer For more than two decades, Sean Lu has helped take Nike's boldest concepts from prototype to production. As a developer, he works at the crucial handoff point where innovation meets scaling the shoe production for Nike's business. On Nike Mind, that meant solving unprecedented production challenges like how to create and bond 22 independent cushioning nodes while preserving the precise sensory design that makes the technology groundbreaking.My expertise is to bring a design to life by practising project management and leadership while working closely with many different functional teams. The goal is always both team excellence and product excellence, making sure the product meets the brief, the design intent, is tested and proven.The biggest challenge was producing and attaching 22 individual nodes in a consistent way. Regular shoes might have five or six major parts. Here we had 22, each needing to be made and bonded precisely. Solving that required new methods of make very different from conventional shoemaking.One crucial breakthrough was the stretchy strobel. In normal shoes, it's stiff. But here it had to stretch multidirectionally so the nodes could move freely and transfer sensation. Without that, the whole system wouldn't work.There were moments we thought, this is too difficult, maybe we can't do it. But we always asked ourselves: are we truly doing the best we can or is there another way? Once you achieve it, the value for the athlete makes it all worth it.

THE CREATIVE VISIONARY: ERIC AVAR VP, creative director, Innovation Few designers have shaped Nike's visual and performance language more than Eric Avar. After spending decades creating some of the brand's most iconic footwear from Foamposite to Free to the Kobe line, Avar joined the Nike Mind project to help translate complex neuroscience into design. His focus: find simplicity, stay curious and create a shoe that reawakens the body's natural connection to movement.What made this project next-level was the chance to forget everything we knew about traditional footwear. Instead of chasing propulsion or flight, we asked how to create a more natural sensory underfoot experience—one that could strengthen the mind-body connection to help make athletes feel calm, focused and present.My role was to help guide the creative vision. To connect the macro and micro details of science, art and story. The best ideas happen when those dimensions align. My job was to help the team see the true north and to bring clarity to how the science should feel once it's on foot.Every dimension of this project was new—new science, new engineering, new design language. Each insight from the lab reshaped how we approached materials or geometry and every prototype fed new questions back to the scientists. That constant back-and-forth was where the breakthroughs happened.Performance design is always a balance. Too much cushioning and you lose sensation; too much sensation and it becomes overwhelming. Our challenge was to find harmony between comfort, clarity and awareness.This feels like a new frontier—a new paradigm of performance. We're proving through science but we're also discovering through intuition. The more we lean into that mix of curiosity and expertise, the more magic we'll uncover.What I love most about this new technology is that it represents the unknown. It's a reminder that performance isn't only about going faster. It's about feeling more, thinking deeper and reconnecting with the moment.

THE MASTER ORCHESTRATOR: MATTHEW NURSE, PHD Chief science officer, NIKE, Inc. With a background spanning biomechanics, physiology and performance research, Matthew Nurse has guided Nike's most ambitious science-led innovations. As chief science officer, he oversaw the Nike Mind project from a multidisciplinary vantage point, coordinating scientists, designers and engineers to keep the various parts moving in sync.Most people don't fully appreciate the importance of sensory feedback from the body, especially the feet. The foot is full of thousands of sensors that give the brain constant information about balance, position and spatial awareness. This is the first product built with the intent of influencing that feedback to help athletes stay focused, present and more aware of their environment.If the body is the engine, the mind is the driver. With Nike Mind, we're starting to think about how to make the driver sharper and clearer. Mental preparation has become just as important as physical, and we're only scratching the surface of what's possible.Science and creativity have to leapfrog each other. Science shouldn't limit dreams but it can help target them. Some of these concepts aren't new, but only now do we have the design and manufacturing capabilities to make them real. Building floating, independent nodes that compress and rotate to deliver sensory information to the brain wasn't possible 20 years ago. Today it is.Athlete feedback drove everything. We went through hundreds of iterations, tuning the number, density, flexibility and placement of the nodes to make sure the sensation was enough to feel and focus on but not so much that it became distracting. It had to be "just right" and only athletes could tell us where that balance was.The beauty of Nike Mind is that beyond feeling grounded, you are grounded. Using tools like EEG, we've measured changes in brain activity in the areas linked to focus and presence. That's the first time we've been able to show—and prove—that footwear construction can influence how the mind works.And this is only chapter one. We've focused on the body for decades. Now, as we look at the mind alongside it, the opportunities for athletes are limitless.

THE PROBLEM SOLVER: BRYAN YOUNGS Innovation programme director, Footwear Bryan Youngs brings more than 20 years of footwear expertise focused on transforming innovation into manufacturable reality. For Nike Mind, he led the scale-up effort, translating a handcrafted sensory prototype into a system that could be produced consistently and reliably. By bridging advanced innovation with global manufacturing, he helped ensure the concept could move from lab experiment to product launch.The idea of sensory footwear has been around for a decade, but the challenge was scale. For years it was an arts-and-crafts project—something&nbsp;you could hand-make but not mass-produce. With Mind, we had to move past that to create something we could build with our manufacturing partners while still preserving the complex architecture underfoot.With our manufacturing partners, we developed a system that simplified the build from dozens of individual attachments down to just a few key steps. That shift allowed us to replicate the sensorial experience athletes loved from the earliest prototypes while making it manufacturable at scale.Our willingness to wrestle with the hardest problems is something that makes Nike very unique. We'd failed to solve sensory footwear for 10 years, but each attempt taught us something. We have the willingness to keep asking the big questions and then the patience and persistence to finally crack them. With these two new products, we're just getting started.

Rachel Cavanaugh is a Portland-based freelance writer who covers food, lifestyle, travel, fitness, adventure and the outdoors. Her work has appeared in Men's Journal, Outdoor Life, GearJunkie, MSN, Yahoo, The Independent, The Hollywood Reporter, Digital Trends, Bustle, Elite Daily, Mic, Travel Oregon, Matador Network and others. She has a background in digital production and brand storytelling and holds a journalism degree from the University of Montana.

Rachel Cavanaugh

It took more than a decade to crack it: shoes that can connect your body to your mind to help you stay calm, focused and present.

Zach Doleac's work is as eclectic as he is, a tasteful blend of polish and grit. His imagery forges honest connections with real people—from boxers in Goma to refugees in Beirut, clowns in Cairo and cowboys from Polson to Houston.&nbsp;When not on assignment, Zach is rarely still, pedalling around the Pacific Northwest, grooving to a beat or sliding on snow, usually in the company of his pup, Frida.&nbsp;You can find more of Zach's work on his <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.zachdoleac.com/" target="_blank">website</a> or follow him on <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.instagram.com/zachdoleac" target="">Instagram</a>.

Zach Doleac

Feature

Innovation

Inside the Nike Mind Team That Turned Neuroscience Into Footwear

This is where listening to the athlete is made manifest. The LeBron James Innovation Center is the home of the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL), where Nike continues to set the pace for breakthroughs in sport science.

What It Does

<h3>What It Does</h3>The NSRL is built with nearly every training environment imaginable for Nike researchers to study sport performance. Its facilities include a state-of-the-art basketball court, a 200-metre endurance track, a 100-metre straightaway and an artificial-turf training pitch. All in service of capturing athletes in motion at full speed, the NSRL houses the world's largest motion-capture installation. Nearly 100 force plates help scientists study an athlete's interaction with their field of play, while four advanced climate chambers simulate the thermal environments experienced by athletes at temperatures from -20 degrees to 50 degrees Celsius.&nbsp;"This is the epicentre of where we work with athletes of all abilities, all backgrounds, all skills and all sports", says Matthew Nurse, PhD, VP, chief science officer at Nike.The NSRL has many goals. Here, Nike can understand the unique needs of athletes, contextualise challenges and advance breakthroughs across a spectrum of athletic, no matter the playing field.

What It Helps Us Do

<h3>What It Helps Us Do</h3>While athletes within the NSRL are being observed at play, other people are at play, too: testing, prototyping and innovating inside the LeBron James Innovation Center to help shape the future of sport. The community of Nike experts who work in the building are diversely talented, from biomechanics researchers to robotics experts, from computational designers to patent pros, all working together to uncover new frontiers in sport performance.&nbsp;Teammates work across disciplines, forming an expertise greater than the sum of individual talents."In the Innovation space, we take information from the NSRL, and we're able to look at different ways to solve an athlete's problem. It gets extremely interesting", says Janett Nichol, VP of Apparel and Advanced Digital Creation Studio. "In a conventional way of building a product, we would just go straight to a material, get a pattern, sew it and then that would be it. Here, we can go to anything from biology to chemistry to pushing the limits of a machine to create a very different experience with materials".Practically no corner of Nike is untouched by the creativity that's stoked in the LeBron James Innovation Center. And no design feature was an afterthought. Keeping sustainability at the forefront, the building features 908 solar panels on its roof, is powered by 100% renewable electricity and uses over 21,000 lbs of Nike Grind for the NSRL flooring. Other details are subtle callouts to Nike history. The entryway to the LeBron James Innovation Center mimics the dimensions of a shoebox. A replica Winnebago, housed inside the building as a meeting space, nods to Nike's early days of selling shoes.At over 750,000 square feet, the building is a beacon for athletic performance, just like the athlete for whom it's named. The mission of the researchers, scientists, designers, engineers, makers and artisans who work here is to make athletes better and make the world better for athletes.&nbsp;

This is where listening to the athlete is made manifest.

The LeBron James Innovation Center

Answering this question requires paying special attention to word choice, says Blaise Williams, senior sport scientist with the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL). How Nike primarily evaluates "better" in running is in efficiency—or the degree to which someone can spend less energy doing the same movement. That's how teams inside the NSRL measure what being a better runner looks like. And in that regard, yes, anyone can become a better runner

<h3>How We Approach It</h3>Nike researchers use a range of tools to measure biomechanical efficiency. One of them is <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/nike-nsrl-form" target="null">Nike Form</a>, a proprietary movement analysis tool that's available for athletes to trial right now at select Nike stores. With a two-minute run on the treadmill, Nike Form collects 150 data points across your body, from the tilt of your head down to the angle of your ankle, to give you a custom readout of your movement pattern. The tool's algorithm is designed to study how to optimise the way the entire body—not just the lower half—moves through space."NSRL Form isn't just a runner's tool. It's a running tool that gives athletes the power to know themselves", says Williams.This is where the power of self-awareness comes in. After your 2-minute treadmill run, NSRL Form produces a report with guidance for you;&nbsp;a few simple tweaks to your gait pattern can be all you need to become a more efficient runner. For example, let's say your step count is below the recommended 160 steps-per-minute cadence. By focusing on slightly quickening your step turnover, your other body positions will adjust accordingly, such as creating less of a forward lean, or repositioning your foot strike to better hit under your body's centre of gravity, which can lead to a more efficient gait pattern. Small adjustments are all a runner needs to help them cover more ground using less energy.&nbsp;

The beauty of a proprietary tool like Form, says Williams, is how its methods are applicable to human movement as a whole, not just running. The cues that can help a runner move more efficiently are the same cues that can help a basketball player or a footballer cover ground more efficiently.Some recommendations prescribed by NSRL Form can drastically change how a runner moves, like changing your degree of forward lean. Other factors of a runner's gait pattern are truly part of their biomechanical DNA, like the length of their levers. But no matter your body shape, the activity you do or the shoes you lace up, Williams says there are gains to be made from understanding your current form.&nbsp;"We're empowering athletes through information to make decisions based on how they move, regardless of the shoe they wear or even the sport they play".

One simple way, says our expert, is by finding out how efficiently you're running.

Ask a Sport Scientist

How Can I Become a Better Runner?

All of Nike's record-shattering, convention-breaking&nbsp;shoes began as prototypes. Many of them were disguised the same way: shrouded in black.American marathoner Conner Mantz remembers when he received the first prototype of the Vomero Premium in December of 2023. The upper was blacked out. The Air Zoom units sandwiched in the midsole foam, the shoe's most identifiable feature, were masked with tape.&nbsp;Holding the prototype, he points to a light outline across the midsole. "You can still see the tape lines", he says. "It was to keep people from seeing the Air Zoom units while I went on my long runs".This step in the prototyping process, called "blinding", is one of many ways in which Nike researchers and sport scientists set the table for testing new shoes with an athlete. Part of the goal is to keep the shoe undercover from the public for as long as possible. Scientists will hide stand-out attributes of the shoe, like its midsole profile or its upper, whenever it's tested in a public setting. But shrouding the prototype in mystery is intended for the athlete, too. The goal when designing these test studies is to minimise any confounding factors that could affect how an athlete performs. That includes getting past any hesitations about how odd, distinct or flat-out wild a prototype might look. Researchers work hard to isolate an athlete's physical response when they use a new piece of tech. They don't want any quality of a shoe to prematurely influence an athlete's feedback. Undistracted, the athlete can focus on the straightforward experience of wearing the shoe, getting a taste for how this mysterious new tool can give them a competitive edge.

Much like its final design, the Vomero Premium's earliest prototypes drew plenty of knee-jerk reactions at first sight. It nearly falls into a different category of maximalist footwear altogether. To a degree, that's where it belongs. The Vomero Premium is ineligible for World Athletics competition thanks to its 55mm stack height in the heel, a full bed of ZoomX foam and two exposed Zoom units borrowed from Nike track spikes in the forefoot and the heel.&nbsp;Mantz was in a deciding moment in his competitive season. He was battling a bone injury to his femur, but the 2024 US Olympic Marathon Trials were fast approaching, and would determine who travelled to Paris later that summer to compete for a medal. Training was painful at times. He couldn't get in the mileage he needed. In his transition back to road running, he needed a bold solution to help build back his stamina. What he got was a bold, new prototype to test out. But the leap from a prototype's presentation to its adoption is easier said than done."What I needed in my training shoe was something that could get my confidence back up", says Mantz. "When my team showed me this new Nike prototype, it was unlike anything I'd seen before. It was a lot. You see this, and you think it's going to be clunky to run in".

Testing innovative prototypes with new cushioning systems like that of the Vomero Premium is a thorough process. It includes hours of exchanges between athletes, designers and scientists about which qualities of the shoe need to be turned up and which should be toned down. Just as important in the process, though, is another tall task: to channel positive belief in a product that might look and feel different from what an athlete is used to wearing.Sometimes a prototype must fight against historical preconceptions if it contains technology that was never thought to "belong" in a particular sport. Take the Nike Maxfly sprint spike. Introduced in Tokyo in 2021, the spike was the first to bring Air Zoom to the 100 metres. Seeing the pronounced Air unit in the forefoot was unusual, particularly for an event that suggests a less-is-more approach for footwear. Weren't simpler, more minimal spikes better? Fast forward to Tokyo's conclusion, and athletes wore the Maxfly and medalled in both the men and women's 100 metres—and the 200 metres, the 400 metres, the 800 metres and the relay events.&nbsp;A clear premise, to fine-tune the plated airbag design for sprint biomechanical loads, was achieved both through adoption and through race performances.How do you convince athletes that, while what they're currently wearing may work,&nbsp;this&nbsp;prototype they're holding in their hands has the makings of something special?"Our main focus is trust", says Tobie Hatfield, Nike senior director, Athlete* Innovation. "If athletes don't know that you're looking out for them as individuals, they'll never trust the product you make for them. Everything we do has to be built on earning their trust".Encouraging an athlete to adopt a new shoe depends on stoking that trust—emotionally, psychologically and, in the case of a shoe, biomechanically.

Trace all shoes back to their first prototypes, and you'll find that most designs are intentionally made as visually subdued versions of the final silhouette. This allows for controlled research; the more basic a shoe looks, the less likely an athlete will form a biased opinion about it. Emily Farina, sr principal, Running Footwear Research in the NSRL, recalls the earliest testing of the Vaporfly 4% prototype in the mid 2010s. She says the shoe's initial field research went relatively unnoticed, thanks in large part to the anonymous-looking prototype. The early design would be the starting point for the groundbreaking Vaporfly 4% Elite worn by Eliud Kipchoge in Breaking 2. "If you saw the early prototype in 2015, it was hard to really know what you were looking at", says Farina, referring to its stack height and rocker shape, two outlying qualities which have become standard for that new era of cushioned running shoes. "Validation relied on what you felt and how you performed, not what you could see. Nike brought the prototype to Eliud's running camp in Kenya. A lot of the runners had trouble understanding how the design could make them faster. That is, until they took the shoes for a tempo run, looked down at their watches and realised they'd cut their pace by 30 seconds or more while exerting the same effort".

The stopwatch is one of the simplest signs of biomechanical efficiency. Are you able to run faster for the same effort? If the answer is yes, persuading an athlete to continue testing a new prototype becomes a lot simpler, no matter how extreme it looks. Often the athlete comes to this realisation of their improved performance in a kind of epiphany, like in the scene Farina describes, when a runner is able to accomplish something they weren't expecting and feel great while doing it. For Conner Mantz, his came during a long run in Utah, where he laced up the Vomero Premium prototype for a 22-miler with his training partners, still building up his base fitness due to the injury. He ran four of those miles at a snappy 4:30 pace. Mantz was shocked by how good he felt."That's when I started thinking to myself, maybe there's something special here", says Mantz, laughing how the prototype's stealthy design drove his teammates nuts. "They'd ask me to just tell them what this new shoe was. I'd tell them, 'Don't worry about it'".Other athletes need more information to trust a prototype. That's why Nike scientists test athlete responses to a range of stimuli, dubbed "signals". In footwear research, signals are different ways to evaluate a shoe's effect on performance.When world champion Faith Kipyegon visited the NSRL in September 2024, she underwent a number of tests that gave Nike scientists a quantitative launching pad for how to serve Faith in preparation for her four-minute mile attempt the following year. She underwent a VO2 Max test to explore her personal capacity. Another signal that's typical of NSRL visits from elite runners is a submax VO2 test, in which the athlete runs on a treadmill and swaps in different shoes while they are hooked up to an oxygen mask. The test results measure the body's use of oxygen to perform a task. Here, in comparing one shoe to another, proof of improved performance comes through improved physiological stats.

Along with creating Faith's one-of-one track spike, Nike provided her with a whole range of Nike tools to supplement her training for Breaking4, including the not-yet-released Vomero Premium for her recovery runs.

"The Vomero Premium was a key part of my training journey", says Faith. "It's so soft, cushioned and comfortable, and it helps me train harder with less impact to allow me to recover faster and stay focused on my goal".

Breaking the Mould for Breaking4

New doesn't always mean perfect. In the case of Faith's attempt, designers listened to every bit of her critical feedback to get her Victory Elite FK prototype just right, like expanding the width in the forefoot or adding spikes for better traction at toe-off. Mantz's review of the Vomero Premium prototypes were just as honest. The first prototype needed a more supportive upper, he told Nike designers and developers. After a few weeks, he had an updated version on his feet, though the second prototype felt less like a recovery shoe and more like a speedy, Alphafly-esque shoe. He relayed his feedback to the design teams. Another one of the updated versions had gone almost too extreme on the cushioning. It was too soft, said Mantz. The teams adjusted the midsole to find a happy medium between too soft and too race-y."Conner would always give us straight, honest feedback, which is vital to our process", says Rachel Nichols, lead developer, Nike Running. The feedback loop encompassed a variety of teammates across product design, working together to address Mantz's detailed review of each prototype.On and on the dialogue went, up to a fifth version of the prototype, and this one was … just right. He was back to logging 120+ mile training weeks, and what's more, he was feeling confident again, equipped with a training shoe that was working with his body through the high volume.

You know where the story goes from here. Mantz would go on to win the 2024 US Olympic Trials, where he secured his spot for Paris, finishing eighth. Now, Mantz is using every tool in his arsenal, including the Vomero Premium, to chase a new personal milestone at the 2025 Chicago Marathon: the American record of 2:05:38.&nbsp;"The Vomero Premium became this incredibly important shoe in my career. Training in the shoe helped me feel like myself again", says Mantz. "I'm really excited for people to be able to experience it. Going through the process of testing those early prototypes, helping make the final shoe as good as it can be, meant a lot to me".

Unflinching athlete feedback makes all products better. If a prototype has any chance to take off, incomplete versions need to be dismantled and built back up. Trust with athletes is formed not just through the successes, says Hatfield. It's formed through the failures, requiring the willingness to acknowledge when a product fell short. Shoes are never tested in a technological vacuum. Spreadsheets of positive data, oxygen masks and shrouded midsoles are all part of the magic. But trust in a new prototype begins and ends with the ordinary, relational act of listening to what athletes need."We never want a shoe to be disguised as a solution that was looking for a problem", says Hatfield. "That's backwards. A shoe should start by considering a problem that needs a solution. Listening to athletes gets to the heart of their needs, and that's where trust is formed".

Davis Jones is the senior editor for about.nike.com. His areas of interest include sport science, performance product design and the history of sport.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Born and raised in Oregon, Davis attended the University of San Diego. Upon graduating, he worked as an editorial intern for Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He was a writer and editor for Surfer magazine before returning to the Pacific Northwest to work for Nike in 2018.&nbsp;

Davis Jones

Conner Mantz Feature Loop

How do you convince athletes that, while what they're currently wearing may work, the prototype they're holding in their hands has the makings of something special?

How We Partner With Athletes On New Prototypes

Words: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/department-of-nike-archives" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Department of Nike Archives</a> In 1971, Watergate was just a hotel, NASA was preparing Apollo 15 and a small Oregon company had just sold its first pair of shoes.The shoe—a football boot called the Nike—retailed for $16.95. Its defining feature was a tick-shaped stripe created by a Portland State University student for $35. Few noticed the shoe, but the mark would long outlast it.At the time, Nike wasn't yet the global sports brand it would become. Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman were still operating as Blue Ribbon Sports, a small distributor of Japanese running shoes. But contracts with their supplier were winding down, and Knight knew the company's future depended on more than someone else's product. To succeed, BRS needed a shoe of its own—and with it, an identity.That February, Knight contracted a factory in Mexico to produce a black football boot with a white sole. To distinguish it from Onitsuka Tiger models, he needed a brand mark. He turned to Carolyn Davidson, a design student he'd met while teaching accounting at Portland State.Two years earlier, Davidson had been overheard in a hallway telling a classmate she couldn't afford an oil painting course. Knight offered her $2 an hour to make charts and graphics for his side business. Over time, she created ads, brochures and catalogues. Now, he was asking her for something bigger: a stripe for the side of a shoe.

Davidson sketched half a dozen options. In an office in Tigard, Oregon, Knight gathered two employees to review them, including Jeff Johnson, Nike's first full-time hire. None of them made a strong impression. "It came down to a matter of which was the least awful", Johnson recalled.The group settled on Davidson's curving tick. She thought it suggested motion. Knight was unconvinced. "Well, I don't love it", he told her, "but it will grow on me".The stripe—not yet called the Swoosh—was rushed to Mexico so production could begin. Davidson sent Knight an invoice for $35.

Those first shoes carried the new mark into the world, but it looked different on nearly every model. On some, the line stretched wide. On others, it pinched tight. One runner joked that the curvier version resembled a "dead fish". Factories stitched it however they could, and designers adjusted the angle depending on the shoe's shape.

Yet the stripe was already making appearances in the right places. At the 1972 Boston Marathon, two of the top American finishers crossed the line wearing Nike shoes marked with Davidson's design—the first confirmed appearance of a Swoosh in a major race. The company highlighted the feat in marketing the following year.Apparel presented another challenge. On tops and bags, the asymmetry of the mark seemed awkward. Johnson experimented by fanning multiple Swooshes into a circle, creating what became known as the "Sunburst" or "Pinwheel" logo. Borrowed in spirit from the 1972 Olympic design, it gave Nike something bold to put on warm-ups and team gear.

Geoff Hollister, Nike's third employee—who&nbsp;would go on to pioneer the company's early marketing efforts—pressed&nbsp;the Sunburst onto vests and tracksuits. He also applied the Swoosh alone in unconventional ways. In 1974, Steve Prefontaine appeared at a meet in Tacoma wearing a tracksuit with a lone backwards Swoosh across the chest. That marked the first time the logo stood by itself on apparel.In those first years, the design was far from consistent. Some called it the stripe. Others thought it looked strange, even unbalanced. But on marathon finishing lines, in Olympic trials and on the chest of America's most famous runner, the mark was already doing its job: it was sticking.What began as a reluctant choice—a student's sketch rushed off to a factory—had become the emblem of Nike's earliest wins. The Swoosh wasn't yet the global icon it would become, but it was already proving it had staying power.

In the decades since that first football boot, the Swoosh has taken on countless forms. It was paired with bold Helvetica in the 1970s, broadcast to millions in Dennis Hopper's 1993 American football ads, stretched across Niketown Portland's architecture and splashed across caps at Wimbledon. It has been oversized, miniaturised, multiplied and, at times, overused. It has been guarded by Nike's "brand police", celebrated by athletes and parodied by critics.Through all those shifts, one through line has remained: the Swoosh endures. What began as a quick sketch by a college student has become one of the most recognised symbols in the world. More than a stripe, it's a global shorthand for speed, innovation and possibility.

Before Nike was a worldwide sports brand, it was an upstart company in need of an eye-catching visual identity. Here's the real story of the Swoosh.

The Nike Swoosh logo: from humble beginnings to global icon

On 29 May 1975, Steve Prefontaine crossed the finishing line for what would be his final race. In a 5000m victory where he was just a second and a half away from beating his own American record, Pre was wearing what would eventually be called his "signature" spike, in that it was created for Pre and applied his scrupulous product feedback: the Pre Montreal, a name inspired by the summer games happening in Canada the following year, in which Pre was scheduled to compete in the 5000m.&nbsp;Lore has it that, prior to the Pre Montreal, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/how-steve-prefontaine-set-the-pace-for-nike" target="_blank">Steve Prefontaine</a> was reluctant to run in Nike athletics shoes because he couldn't find a shoe that felt just right, including the prototypes created for him by Bill Bowerman. The Pre Montreal might have been the first Nike shoe that Pre truly loved, and its history is grounded in equal parts innovation and sombre memory for its legendary endorser.&nbsp;

How we made it

The Pre Montreal was the first competitive racing spike to have a toe box without seams or stitching. It went into production in 1973 but didn't become available to the masses until the following year.While visiting Japan with Phil Knight in 1971 to order a new batch of Nike samples, Jeff Johnson, one of Nike's first and foundational employees, tinkered with spike plates he picked up from a distributor in Germany.

It took until 1973 to develop, but Johnson was looking for a way to combine a six-spike toe plate with a seamless toe piece upper. To do it, Johnson used reverse leather in the forefront of the shoe and a standard shoe seam in the back of the shoe, joined by two pieces of nylon."The idea of getting rid of the seam was to reduce the risk of blisters, because some people have a long first toe and some people have a long second toe", Johnson told Nike DNA historians. "So, where the toe is going to strike the stitching and overlay is unpredictable".

How it took off

Prefontaine had yet to find a Nike spike that he felt comfortable in during competition. That included Bowerman's novel prototypes."They were pretty rough and they were inconsistent because of the lasting machinery", said Johnson. The shoes that Bowerman was cobbling during Pre's days were stuck in an older era, still solid shoes but not the freshest spikes on the track. As Johnson explained, "You wore them out of respect for Bowerman".&nbsp;But times were changing. Pre graduated from the University of Oregon in 1973 and quickly signed on with Blue Ribbon Sports as the company's self-proclaimed national director of public affairs. He even printed his own business cards. Pre's endorsement of Nike shoes, which often meant sending a pair of shoes along with a hand-written recommendation to a young runner, would become the cornerstone of Nike's marketing efforts for years to follow.Pre was never shy about giving input on his shoes to Johnson, who used Pre's feedback to help craft the Pre Montreal. Prefontaine expressed to Johnson that a seamless toe would provide comfort to a runner's foot."We had Pre as an endorsement but we had nothing specific to give him", said Johnson. "This was the most interesting shoe, so I said 'Why don't we give it to Pre?' What can we call a shoe that we can somehow name after Pre? Pre Montreal!"The spike's final design earned Prefontaine's seal of approval. Amateur Athletic Union regulations of that era prevented athletes from officially endorsing products at the risk of losing their amateur status altogether. Still, it was impossible to disassociate the runner from his colourful new spike. Nobody could stop Pre, and Pre was everywhere. He would race from 1973 until that final race in May of 1975 while wearing his Pre Montreal spikes.&nbsp;

What's next

The legacy of the Pre Montreal continues with the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-international-running-pack-official-images" target="_blank">Nike International Running Pack</a>. The collection's Vaporfly 4, the latest evolution of Nike's original super shoe, embodies the spirit of the Pre Montreal through the spike's memorable red and blue colourway, its visual treatment inspired by the spike upper's combination of nylon and suede.

The 1973 Pre Montreal racing spike was an innovation worthy of its rising-star endorser, Steve Prefontaine.

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The history of Steve Prefontaine's "signature" track spike

When asked about the race that told her she belonged with the world's best half-milers, Keely Hodgkinson thinks back to her 2021 victory at the British Championships. She was 19 years old, a self-proclaimed underdog and facing some of her home nation's top distance runners, many whose careers she'd watched with admiration as an amateur athlete. Now 23, the Nike athlete has reached that same national-hero status. She currently holds the world's leading 800-metre time of 1:54.74, in spite of a year of injuries, and is a leading candidate for a gold medal in Tokyo.&nbsp;&nbsp;Keely keeps good company back home. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more competitive nation in the women's 800-metre than the UK. In 2024, of the top five 800-metre women's times, UK runners held three of them—all from the same race at London's Olympic Stadium in July, when Keely set the British record. That Mancunian pride is a source of inspiration that Keely holds close, down to her choice of training club, M11. Based in Manchester, it's the newest locale under the Nike Swoosh TC umbrella, whose members include the likes of Georgia Hunter Bell, Sarah Healy and Erin Wallace. As Keely shares below, there's power in rediscovering your strength from the places that shaped you.&nbsp; Growing up in a small town can give you important opportunities if you have the talent and the work ethic. I grew up in a very small community outside of Manchester. For me, it was a true place to grow up. I had such great support at my school. People saw something in me and they encouraged me to run cross-country, where I first found a love of the sport. I don't know if anyone thought I would eventually take the world stage, but when you're a young kid and you're seen by members of a small community, you're given the opportunities to find a passion you might not otherwise find yourself.When I think of who I'm representing as a runner, I first think of my hometown. I'm quite proud to be from Manchester. We're one of the greatest cities in the world. And when it comes to sport, we really are incredible. We have two of the biggest football clubs in the world in one city. We have all kinds of high-performing athletes who are from Manchester. I love what the city has taught me. One of our mottos from M11 is that we're as busy as bees, which speaks to our city's work ethic.&nbsp;

Literal first-place wins are great, but you have to keep track of the small, behind-the-scenes wins that nobody else sees. When I think back to last year, I had a few different goals: win the World Indoor Championships, win the European Championships and staying undefeated. None of them happened because I kept getting hurt from my hamstring injury. All of a sudden, I had to shift to smaller goals. Let's put the spikes on. Let's start running. Let's run at 1,500m pace. Now 800m pace. Those were some crazy-small wins that meant a lot to me. It wasn't where I wanted to be, but sometimes you have to take a step back and take the small wins to get to the big ones.&nbsp;Your coaches can be a voice of reason when you encounter setbacks. I had many moments of frustration this year from the injuries. Coach Trevor [Painter] and Coach Jenny [Meadows] are amazing for a lot of reasons, one of them being how supportive they were of me. We have the kind of trusting relationship where we can have honest conversations. It was a struggle this year to figure out what was going on with the injuries, especially coming after a gold-medal year in Paris, but they 100 percent believed in me. Neither of them panic. I'm like, in some respects, surely we should be panicking now? But they have full belief in my capabilities, my talent and my drive. They know that if I put in the work, there's nothing to worry about.&nbsp;Our teammate dynamic within M11 is so solid. We all get on really well, we support each other, we have loads of ambition and we compete to get the best out of each other. Recovering from injury, it's been great having teammates like Georgia as a benchmark—she's been killing it on the track. We all work off each other's strengths and weaknesses across different practice sessions. We've had some of the boys join our team this year and I think they're drafting off us girls who've had a lot of experience and who've performed on the world stage. I couldn't ask for a better group of people to take the track with, day in and day out.&nbsp;

Some races have the makings of special times. That 2024 race in London where I set the national record was one of them. Olympic Stadium is this dream venue to compete in. Every competitor, whether you're British or not, loves that crowd, because they know they'll draw from the energy and the atmosphere as they burn down the home stretch. I knew I was in amazing shape. This was the opportunity to really go for it in front of a home crowd. We did the British 1–2–3. Georgia ran an amazing race and Erin helped us get there as our pacer. It's a race I look back on with a lot of pride, both personally and nationally.&nbsp;There were times I didn't even think I would be here to compete for a medal at Worlds. It's been a real struggle. Even if I got back onto the track, I didn't think I'd have enough time to prepare. That's why I'm so thankful for the journey. It would be really meaningful to get a win in the same Tokyo stadium where my career took off four years ago. To still be fighting for those medals four years later is crazy to think about. It goes to show what a great team we have back home.

Last year's 800-metre gold medallist has found her championship form again after a year of injuries. Integral to her comeback are the people and places she holds close.

To get back to Tokyo, Keely Hodgkinson found her way back home

Words: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/department-of-nike-archives" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Department of Nike Archives</a>Not every breakthrough in sports science begins in a lab.For Nike's iconic Waffle sole—one of running's most game-changing innovations—it began in the kitchen.It was 1971 and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/bill-bowerman-nike-s-original-innovator" target="_blank">Bill Bowerman</a> was wrestling with a problem he'd been turning over in his mind ever since a hard, slick new urethane track had been installed at the University of Oregon two years prior, which was injuring runners. Bowerman had to face a reality: he had chosen a track surface that wasn't holding up, and he needed to find a fix. How could his runners get better grip? Spikes dug in too deep; flats didn't bite enough.One morning, while glancing at his wife, Barbara's, waffle iron—a Model 251 by Bersted Manufacturing Company, which the Bowermans had received as a wedding gift in 1936—he was struck by the grid pattern. The raised squares seemed like the exact geometry that could deliver the lightweight traction he'd been chasing.He poured liquid urethane straight into the family waffle iron, only it instantly glued shut permanently, ruining their 35-year-old wedding present. Undeterred, he drove into town, bought several more secondhand waffle irons, and kept experimenting. Those first imprints came out inverted with concave bumps, but they sparked the idea that would lead him to refine moulds and materials until a workable prototype finally emerged.

What resulted was the first version of the Nike Moon Shoe—a design that would shape the future of running for decades."The Waffle sole changed everything", says Nike Running Historian Rick Lower. "Not only did it transform how runners thought about traction and cushioning but it showed people what Nike was about: solving problems in new ways".

A catalyst for the future

In 1971, Nike, then still known as Blue Ribbon Sports, an American importer of Japanese running shoes, hadn't yet become the global force in sports innovation that it is today. The fledgling company was still finding its footing, and Bowerman—co-founder, coach and relentless tinkerer—was at the centre of that push. To him, every surface was a problem waiting for a solution.&nbsp;That included the new Astroturf laid down at Autzen Stadium, where the Oregon Ducks football team struggled for traction. In wet conditions, players often ditched their boots for basketball shoes with a herringbone outsole that gripped better. Bowerman and teammate Jeff Johnson began exploring traction ideas for football as well as athletics, a line of thinking that would lead to the Astrograbber—a shoe prototyped in 1972 and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-bode-rec-astrograbber-official-images" target="_blank">reissued decades later</a>."There had been no real innovation in outsoles for decades", says Nike Running Historian Rick Lower. "Running shoes were basically just a sheet of rubber to protect your feet from the road, and traction and cushioning were secondary. Bowerman wasn't willing to accept that".Inspired by the moment in his kitchen, he began pulling in a network of local resources to help refine the moulds and materials—tire shops, machinists, cobblers. Early prototypes disintegrated after only minutes of running. Others left athletes with cut ankles from exposed wire that was embedded in the rubber mixture for traction. Yet each failed attempt nudged the idea closer to the finishing line.

By November 1971, the Waffle sole had its first taste of competition when members of Oregon's cross-country team wore early versions to win the NCAA title. Through the winter and spring of 1972, more college&nbsp;and local South Eugene high-school&nbsp;athletes quietly tested pairs. By the following summer, Bowerman and Geoff Hollister were hand-cobbling a small batch of prototypes for a bigger stage: the US Olympic Trials in Eugene.They weren't perfect, especially not for the marathon level. "It was basically just an upper stitched to a thin sheet of waffle", Lower says. "So minimal it was like running barefoot". Still, a handful of brave runners laced them up. Some thought the Waffle sole footprints looked like astronauts' footprints on the moon, becoming part of the lore that gave the prototypes their now-iconic nickname: the Moon Shoe.For the fast-growing company, it was a pivotal moment. Even if the shoe wasn't ready for mass release, it was proof the idea worked and evidence that this small Oregon company could push running footwear in an entirely new direction.

The bridge to a running movement

The Moon Shoe itself never went to market, though a few pairs are believed to have been sold out of Nike's Eugene retail store, making it possible to have snagged one if you were in the right place at the right time. But the shoe's DNA spread quickly. By 1973, Nike released the Oregon Waffle. Two years later came the Waffle Trainer, Nike's first blockbuster success.Designed by Bill Bowerman and Geoff Hollister, as well as famed Bowerman collaborators orthopaedic surgeon Stan James and podiatrist Dennis Vixie, the Waffle Trainer became Nike's most popular running model. It was created at the request of runner Jon Anderson, who wanted a more substantial training shoe, but went well beyond satisfying Anderson's needs—it became the best-selling training shoe in the country. By 1975, orders had topped 100,000 units, and its blue upper with a yellow Swoosh became one of the defining looks of Nike's early years. To this day, it remains emblematic of Nike in the 1970s.

The milestone sneaker didn't just give everyday runners better grip. With a flared sole and a new cushioning sensation unlike anything they'd felt before, it changed expectations of what a running shoe could be."That shoe was the bridge", Lower explains. "It took the Moon Shoe's experiment and turned it into a global product. From there Nike's reputation as an innovator was cemented".But it wasn't the end for the Moon Shoe. After making its revival on Nike collaborator and French designer Jacquemus's runway last January, the iconic silhouette was reimagined for a new generation. Sleek and fashion-forward, the new sneaker, coming soon, bridges performance heritage and style with speed, capturing the same restless drive that defined its earliest incarnation. What was once vaulted as Nike's racing DNA is now primed for the future.

Long live experimentation and innovation

The waffle iron tale might have stayed legend if not for a discovery decades later. When Bowerman's son Tom renovated the family property in Coburg, Oregon, he unearthed a long-forgotten rubbish pit near the carport. Inside were discarded prototypes, moulds and the rusted shell of the waffle iron Barbara Bowerman had tossed after Bill glued it shut.&nbsp;Today, that iron rests in the Department of Nike Archives at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., acting as a reminder of the kitchen tinkering that became the blueprint for Nike's approach and long-term success: experiment boldly, keep refining and never stop pushing forward.

Created from the experimentation and ingenuity of Nike's co-founder Bill Bowerman, the Nike Moon Shoe's unique design would shape the future of running for decades.