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

Nike Running

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.

Nike Basketball

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

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

Cameron was born in Rochester, New York, but grew up in the small town of Brighton, Michigan. Skateboarding and snowboarding were his life until he minted himself as a photographer. For the first 15 years of his career, after he moved to Los Angeles, he shot for skate brands almost exclusively, constantly pushing himself to capture a familiar subject in a fresh, dynamic way. It was like DIY photo school. Try never to be at ground level, and use everything around you to build a more interesting photograph in camera. Foreground elements, reflections, the grit of the street, sun flare, off-kilter perspectives, light trails—this creative restlessness culminated into a signature look that continues to evolve in exciting ways.His approach to visual storytelling envelops you in the moment. You feel like you're the runner trying to beat your personal best, hugging the curves of a racetrack on a motorbike, bouldering with your friends, cycling against a spectacular natural panorama or herding cattle at golden hour. "I like the challenge of making the product the focus but having each image feel honest and human", says Cameron.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Cameron Strand

A summer sun is coming up over the Rift Valley as the runners begin to gather.In Eldoret, Kenya, on the roads and trails that have carried generations of world-class runners over clay, grass, rock and pavement, a group of nine athletes laces up for an early-morning session at the Lornah Kiplagat Sports Academy. By the time morning light reaches the track, the work is already underway.Huddled at the edge of the track is a team of Nike Running experts closely watching the athletes, who include some of sport's top runners. Among them: Jacob Kiplimo, a half-marathon world-record breaker and Brigid Kosgei, an Olympian and marathon world-record setter.During the next few days in late July, these athletes—along with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/eliud-kipchoge-wear-testing-nike-running-zoom-fly-6" target="null">Eliud Kipchoge</a>, the first man to run a sub 2-hour marathon distance, and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/faith-kipyegon-profile" target="null">Faith Kipyegon</a>, the world's fastest woman miler—will run in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-debuts-a-race-day-system-of-speed-designed-for-every-runner" target="">shoes the rest of the world hasn't yet seen</a>, testing prototypes; comparing them with previous versions; and sharing feedback with product, sports marketing and performance specialists who have travelled thousands of miles to hear what they have to say.

As the athletes try on the latest prototypes, they don't mince words. They say what they think: what feels good and what doesn't; where a shoe rubs or shifts; whether it's too soft or too heavy; what they would change. It's an openness that's been built over time and with earned trust: these elite runners know the Nike team didn't travel across two oceans and nearly 9,000 miles to collect compliments. They're here for honest feedback, the kind that's helped the brand push the limits of speed in racing footwear for decades. It is understood that what they say today will shape what they see the next time around—and that their insights will make the shoes better.

The Road to Chicago

For Kiplimo and Kosgei, the next time is coming soon. Both are preparing for the Chicago Marathon, and they'll have Nike's latest elite super-shoe prototype. "These are our top athletes in the marathon", says Chris Cook, Nike development director for race and athletics. "Jacob is our fastest male marathoner. Brigid is a former world-record holder. We want to make sure they have everything they need to perform at their best when it matters most."During Kiplimo's first fitting, the team brings out shoes he's already raced in, including the pair he wore at the London Marathon earlier this year, to provide a baseline. He'd previously told Nike product specialists his foot sometimes moved inside the shoe around corners, so the designers were looking to improve the lockdown and make the shoe lighter without sacrificing bounce or cushioning."We used this shoe as the starting point", says Elliott Heath, Nike running lead for Sport Innovation Studio. "We knew what we had, and the goal was to make it better."

By the time Kiplimo tries on the new prototypes, the team has already iterated on his feedback, using the London shoe as a jumping-off point for several new concepts. His task now is to narrow down what he could race in at Chicago.He works through several versions. One uses an experimental cushioning system he likes but says causes some irritation underfoot. Several others make the final cut, and the team sets them aside for the following morning's workout.Kosgei goes through a similar process, trying her own versions of many of the same prototypes. She compares different weights, fits and constructions, looking for something lighter without giving up the stability and grip she needs, particularly on wet pavement. With several promising options, she elects to test all four.

Champion marathoner Eliud Kipchoge evaluates the Nike Apex, a racing shoe that delivers up to 40 percent more energy return than the Alphafly 3.

Unlike traditional racing shoes, Apex features zero-drop geometry with a 40-millimetre stack height in both the heel and forefoot, creating a balanced, supported ride.

The visible, double-stacked Air Zoom platform in the Nike Apex is designed to compress, store and return energy, creating a uniquely propulsive feeling.

New tech extends to the Nike Apex outsole, where GOATEK and Fast Shot provide strategically placed traction and durability.

The next morning, with prototypes in hand, Kiplimo and Kosgei head to the track. Kiplimo rotates through several configurations over a series of 1,000-metre repeats and 400s, while Kosgei cycles through all four options across 12 1,000-metre repeats. At nearby camps, the rest of the group does the same, swapping shoes and comparing notes with the Nike team between efforts.Later, during a one-on-one fitting with Kipchoge, the marathon champion tries a prototype he finds too wide and suggests removing some of the material. A Nike teammate reaches for another version.&nbsp;They've anticipated and made the change.That cycle—trying on shoes, running in them, offering feedback—continues throughout the week with the athletes, each round giving the Nike team a clearer picture of how the prototypes perform.

The Pursuit of Lighter

Arriving in Kenya with shoes this closely tuned to the athletes they serve starts long before anyone steps onto the track or road.Eric Grimberg, a Nike principal footwear developer based in Korea, was with Kiplimo at the London Marathon earlier that year, where the team saw both what was working in his shoe and what they wanted to improve. He remembers the conversations that fuelled the innovation.&nbsp;"The feedback was really good in some ways, but there was also room for improvement", says Grimberg. "We immediately started talking about what we could do to make a more lightweight version."The team looked at how they could strip out weight without losing the energy return that was making the shoe great, says Cook.

If they were going to achieve this, it would mean reworking virtually every element.&nbsp;They thinned the outsole, lowered the density of the foam, and reduced the thickness of the film surrounding the Air units. For the upper, they borrowed ultralight yarns developed for the spike Kipyegon wore during <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/faith-kipyegon-nike-breaking4-journey" target="null">Breaking4</a>, her attempt to become the first woman to run a mile in under 4 minutes.&nbsp;Together, the changes brought the prototype from roughly 176 grams to about 120, slicing nearly one third of the weight away, an incredible drop.Some of those changes had unexpected effects. Not only did the lower-density foam save weight, it made the shoe softer."We were a little bit nervous about that initially", says Cook.&nbsp;But the athletes loved it."From the feedback we've gotten so far, that's actually been perceived as a benefit, the fact that it's a little bit cushier", explains Cook.

Knowing the Athlete

That interplay between what the team can measure and what an athlete actually experiences is central to the development process. Stats are one thing, but how it feels is what matters."Making performance products is always a balance of athlete feedback and testing in the lab", explains Heath. "Ideally, those two things match up. If something is validated by the athletes, we try to amplify it even further. If it's invalidated, we go back and understand why."The longer Nike works with an athlete, says Cook, the more specific those conversations tend to become. As the team learns what the athlete needs, the athlete also learns what they want, and exactly how to articulate it."When you meet with an athlete for the first time, the conversation may be very short: 'Yeah, it's good. Green's nice. Good colour'", says Cook. "But after working together across multiple shoes, the athletes get much more in tune with the kinds of questions we're asking."

The Nike team has also learned how individual athletes describe what they feel, which questions get the most useful answers and what matters most to each runner. Over time, those lessons can extend beyond the athlete or shoe they began with.Kiplimo's own racing history is a testament to the process. The shoe he wore when he broke the half-marathon world record, for example, helped inform the new <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-alphafly-4-helps-more-runners-go-the-distance-with-speed-and-confidence" target="null">Alphafly 4</a>, carrying lessons from an elite racing shoe into a model that will reach runners more broadly."What was the past for him will be the future for others", says Heath.So too for the latest high-performing Nike prototypes hitting the red Kenyan dirt this summer. The eked-out benefits, born from the hours of listening and iterating, will soon be put to the test on race courses the world over, worn by the most elite, then, not long later, by any runner with the goal to find out what their fastest speed might be.

On high-altitude roads and running tracks in western Kenya, Eliud Kipchoge, Faith Kipyegon, Jacob Kiplimo, Brigid Kosgei and more elite athletes team with Nike experts to create products that can make the impossible possible.

Feature

How the World's Fastest Runners Shaped Nike Apex—and the Brand's Next Racing Shoes

About Nike—stories from inside NIKE, Inc.

In July 2026, more than 10 hours into her race, ultra runner and ACG pro <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/trail-runner-yao-miao-is-running-down-new-goals-with-acg" target="_blank">Yao Miao</a> hit the final wall. Specifically, the eleventh and penultimate section of Camins d'Hèr, a 110-kilometre ultra race in Spain's Pyrenees mountain range, which passes through the small localities of Arties to Escunhau, a distance of about 5 kilometres. The stretch is a gruelling, exposed vertical climb that squeezes every last drop of mental fortitude out of a runner before they tackle the remaining 8 kilometres to the finish. Even the fittest athletes reliably bonk when they reach it.For Miao, the wall was simply one more obstacle to climb. She'd later cross the finishing line, fist raised in the air, completing the race in 13:04:34, the course's fastest-ever time in the women's field. Yao Miao is one of the most accomplished racers of her generation. She's one of only six runners worldwide to win two different UTMB finals events. But she also had a secret tool in her race prep: insights from the Nike Innovation Farm Team, an 18-strong ultra-runner cohort who trained in a four-month residency at the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-sport-research-lab-environmental-chambers" target="_blank">Nike Sport Research Lab</a> (NSRL) in Beaverton, Oregon.

A Nike team of applied physiologists combined the data from Miao's springtime visit to the NSRL with a four-hour resilience run done by the Farm Team and crunched the numbers through a predictive model to map out the pace that would land her in a hypothetical finish window. They shared the formula with Miao in the weeks before Camins d'Hèr. The team estimated she'd finish between 12:37 and 13:44—and to put ink on a specific number, 13:09. She'd cross the arch in Vielha within five minutes of that prediction.Thanks in large part to the data from the Farm Team, there was less guesswork to the milestones Miao needed to hit. The group acted like a squad of teammates in her corner, bringing a sharper clarity to her plan.

And that was the whole point. The 15-week Nike Innovation Farm Team, which kicked off in April at Nike's Philip H. Knight Campus, was created to help Nike innovators uncover the levers behind ultra-endurance running.The science of endurance performance under two hours is fairly well understood. The longer a runner goes, however, the less we know about what causes some to succeed and others to crumble. The standard factors of endurance performance become more dynamic—and unpredictable—especially in ultra-distance mountain running. The distances are outrageous. The terrain shape-shifts in a flash, covering high-altitude climbs and steep descents. There's a mix of unforgiving surfaces, and the weather can change rapidly. What's more, a race can last for days, and it's largely a solo endeavour. You're likely to be running by yourself for extended periods of time, sometimes for hours. The opportunities for a scientist to intervene naturally and observe how the runner's body is negotiating the work are few.

What the Farm Team gave Nike researchers was a rare 15-week window to dig into all aspects of the sport and, maybe most importantly, its elusive performance enhancer: resilience."In a race, everyone slows down over 13 hours", says Brett Kirby, PhD, senior principal scientist of applied performance innovation in the Nike Sport Research Lab. "The winner is the one who slows down the least. In other words, the most resilient runner wins. We wanted to study resilience in three main ways: physiologically, biomechanically and psychologically".With the Farm Team, NSRL scientists wanted to create a realistic, uninterrupted environment to gather enough data to better understand this resilience. The bonus was that the outcomes of their studies should help all runners fine-tune their training. This could be picking the right programme (e.g. what could help you blast through an uphill sprint in hour eight of a race) or the right product to wear for a race course. This scientific foundation for new product solutions extends beyond the pros too, and can help any runner who hits the wall of the mountain and wants to break through.

Nike's vast backyard in the Pacific Northwest became the Farm Team's research centre. They were embedded in the NSRL and set free in the surrounding Portland area, including the sprawling Forest Park trails and the stunning routes in the Columbia River Gorge.&nbsp;"Time under effort is the variable that makes or breaks an ultra runner's race", says Brad Winn, lead researcher of applied innovation, who served as the programme's head coach over the 15-week protocol. "Time is also the critical piece on the research side. We wanted to spend as much of it with these athletes as possible".

The programme's name came from two places. One borrows from the farm team concept popular in sports like baseball, where a farm team serves as an important talent pipeline for a franchise. The other comes from one of Nike's foundational employees, Jeff Johnson. In the mid '90s, he and Stanford track coach Vin Lananna co-founded the esteemed sub-elite distance-running track team, in many ways a precursor to today's track clubs. Both inspirations draw from the same purpose: to explore how a dedicated pipeline can—through athlete talent and the exploration of their potential—improve a larger community.There were 18 spots—nine men and nine women—up for grabs in the Farm Team's squad, and runners applied online beginning in March 2026. Criteria for the programme was strict. Selected runners needed to complete all 15 weeks of training and have the ability to run for up to four hours at a sub-elite pace. Nike Innovation received thousands of applications and had the daunting task of selecting the handful who would be invited to relocate full-time to Beaverton.

The residency's embedded nature was undoubtedly a challenge. "Moving away for four months has been difficult, on top of working a full-time job", says Alec Hewett, a Farm Team runner who works as a senior manager of national teams at USA Triathlon and is in his first year of marriage. "But the sacrifices were still a no-brainer for me and my wife. Having full support from her and from my job has been awesome".The 18 runners were divided into two cohorts, each focusing on a different training protocol over 10 weeks. One was a concentric-dominant, more traditional uphill programme (concentric refers to the shortening of the muscle under force). The other was an eccentric-dominant programme, or one that focused on the lengthening of the muscle under force, translating into downhill workouts. In addition to run-specific workouts, both groups applied their concentric or eccentric focus to assigned strength training workouts. The eccentric groups, for example, would do lifts like descending lunges, paying close attention to the lowering of the weights, whereas the concentric group did a contrasting lift, like a weighted step-up.&nbsp;

The team was given a full array of Nike's diagnostic tools in the NSRL to help scientists better grasp what was happening under the bonnet of each runner. For example, every runner's gait was analysed through <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-nsrl-form" target="_blank">Nike Form</a>, an algorithmic tool developed in-house by the NSRL to study a runner's unique biomechanics. Through this data, scientists could study the athletes' mechanics during long runs, how training impacted their mechanics over the course of the study, how their body interacted with footwear over time and how race simulations impacted fatigue. After 10 weeks of training, each baseline test was measured again, charting how runners progressed their fitness according to their programme.&nbsp;The Farm Team played an important role in testing some of the latest breakthroughs coming out of Nike Innovation, like the recently announced Picklejus, the new ACG model with a cushioning system optimised for big-mountain racing. The squad tested the shoes in the lab, trialling Picklejus during a challenging four-hour treadmill test with changes in both speed and gradient to simulate mountain-like terrain.The team's comments on the shoe and, specifically, their ability to describe in clear terms what they needed to feel from it, helped show what was working well. For example, many runners voiced a need for protective stability without sacrificing snappiness for uphill surges. The Farm Team also tested apparel prototypes that ACG pros like Miao wore for her Camins d'Hèr race.With a trove of scientific data over the 15-week residency (the Nike Form sessions alone gathered some 13 gigabytes of data per runner), the insights move in all directions. They travel down to the general product level and move up to ACG's squad of pros, who are wringing every possible advantage out of their pre-race training, race-day strategy and post-race recovery.&nbsp;Take Caleb Olson. In October 2025, the NSRL Applied Performance Innovation teammates met with the Western States 100 winner for a mini camp in the desert of St. George, Utah, talking about his typical training and how he's preparing for UTMB. That exchange cued unanswered questions in trail running, especially the power of downhill running. Olson asked how he could run downhills at full effort rather than conserving energy for the last descent. That question was an impetus for Nike Innovation Farm Team training: to build a training regime that could fortify Olson's body. Nike Innovation teammates created Nike products that would give him an edge—the same products tested at length by the Farm Team cohort.

"Lab data doesn't win races", says Kirby. "Conversations do. The data doesn't mean anything if we can't connect it to meaningful relationships with our athletes".The Farm Team programme wrapped in late July. Nike scientists now have their own mountain to climb in sorting through the data, and some intriguing results are bubbling up. One of them, says Kirby, is the improvement in physiological, biomechanical and psychological testing in the eccentric training group, which doesn't resemble a traditional, well established fitness programme. On the mega ramp outside 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>, while the runners completed punishing repeats, some of them assigned to the downhill regimen barely felt like they were breaking a sweat. This gives credibility to a convention-bucking point in the world of training: eccentric tolerance is a training variable that must be worked into your plan.While the study's conclusions are ongoing, the takeaways are immediate. And that brings us back to Yao Miao, Camins d'Hèr and the wall.

The morning Miao began the race, she had a dedicated physiological cheat sheet at her fingertips, translated into pacing charts by the second over the technical course. It was like a menu at each stop describing which interventions to take, like whether to apply sun cream, what fuel to eat and why, as well as researched recommendations for what product to wear. This data-backed advice came from Farm Team insights.Miao hit the cooling station at the eleventh stage. The Nike Innovation team had prescribed options: an ice bandana, cold water to pour over her head, salt tablets. They also created a cue card for her technique to help her efficiently scale the ascent: "Head down, shortest stride, poles fully engaged". Included on that card was a concise summary of the plan to finish the race. It summed up in 27 words what Miao was feeling after more than 10 hours of peak physical exhaustion: "Final wall. 57 minutes. Heart rate will be 96% the whole time; that IS the plan. You will feel awful; everyone does. From the top, only 8km remain". Nobody knows exactly what will happen during the twists and turns of an ultra race. But thanks to residency programmes like the Farm Team, there's less mystery in knowing what makes an ultra runner tick.&nbsp;"The people who know athletes best are the ones who spend the most time with them—it's that simple", says Winn. "There's no better way to do that than bringing them here to our house, inviting them in and doing everything we can to support them".

See how athlete insights from the new residency programme help create better products for every ultra runner.

Trail running

How the Nike Innovation Farm Team Is Pushing the Science of Ultra Running

If you've ever cued up a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.nike.com/nrc-app" target="null">Nike Run Club</a> (NRC) session, you know his voice. He's the one in your ears every time you lace up and head out the door—equal parts coach, philosopher and hype man. Chris Bennett, or "Coach B" to the running world, is Nike's Running Global Head Coach and the man behind the mic on the NRC App.&nbsp;He's one of those coaches who always knows what to say at mile 3. You find yourself nodding along mid-run, digging deeper because he's spurring you on. As the voice behind the free running app with users worldwide, Bennett has become widely popular, his mantras so deeply embedded in running culture that they've taken on a life of their own across Reddit threads and social media posts. "Struggling doesn't mean failure". "If you can't do the run you want to do, do the run you can do". "Kindness is hardcore". They're the kind of lines people write on mirrors and carry through difficult days that have nothing to do with running.

A competitive runner from New Jersey, Bennett ran at UNC-Chapel Hill before coaching future Olympians at the post-university level and building what became the Northeast's most successful secondary-school cross-country programme. When Nike asked him to come on as a full-time Coach in 2014, he wrote his entire coaching philosophy down on a legal pad and handed it over. Those notes became the NRC Truths, and he's been building on them ever since.Now, he's distilled that philosophy into his first book, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href=" https://www.harpercollins.com/products/this-is-about-running-this-is-not-about-running-chris-bennett?variant=44778258399266&amp;utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGn3pWCp6GXZKEdlPg-KM6Fa9gVZMj9-nNYb-kPhoN_LD5hC_IkZfYqBb6nGmw_aem_pCHhH0eUGgJ6B-I5oALmGg" target="">This Is About Running. This Is Not About Running,</a> a motivational guide that will be released this autumn and is available for pre-order. It's a title that, if you know anything about Coach B, tells you everything. Bennett's not stopping there. Beginning on 7 July, as part of Nike's 2026 After Dark Tour, his popular podcast will feature a months-long series of conversations with women across the world. From elite athletes to first-time racers, Coach B is passing the mic to women who are changing the game and redefining what's possible.&nbsp;Below, he talks about why he fell in love with running, what he believes about the sport and why the job, as he sees it, is never finished.

How did you get into this line of work, and what led you to where you are today?I've been running basically my entire life. I was the fourth of five kids, so if you wanted to keep up with your older sister and brothers, you had to move. That was the first inspiration to run.I grew up in New Jersey, where there's a really rich tradition of cross-country and athletics at the youth level. It was just something you did. I was introduced to it as a team sport, which I think was really important. I wasn't in love with running initially—I was in love with having teammates, and that's what bridged the gap between trying the sport and dedicating myself to it. I was incredibly lazy until I made the connection that my laziness was hurting the rest of the team. That's what actually got me to train consistently and intelligently. It wasn't about me; it was about the fact that I was letting my team down.I got to run for the Nike Farm Team, a post-university Olympic-development team at Stanford University, and my first Coach there was Jeff Johnson—employee no. 1 at Nike and a good friend to this day. I ran for them for five years. I wasn't trying to make the Olympic team, just the trials. But I was training with people who were, and it was a really incredible experience.I had already decided in secondary school that I wanted to coach and teach. When Nike eventually sat me down and asked what I would do if I were coaching the runners who met at their New York City stores, I mapped out a weekly schedule, the kind you'd give to any serious athlete. And that's how I coach. Just because they're not elite doesn't mean I wouldn't treat them like they are. You don't give somebody less of a regimen because they have less speed.

What is it about the Guided Run format and your specific approach that makes people connect with you the way they do?When it's just audio, you're only engaging with one of their senses, which I think is super powerful. People become more focused on what you're saying. With video, people are paying attention to your hand movements, they're paying attention to the background, their mind starts to drift. But when it's just sound, they're more tuned in, which means that what I'm saying has to be honest. When people are hyper-focused, their BS detector is on high.&nbsp;When we first started creating these, I had a couple of rules. One was that this is unfiltered. There isn't anyone between me and the athlete. I've always been adamant that if I was going to do this, it was going to stay unbelievably human. It wasn't going to be like other guided runs. It was going to be grounded in the coaching philosophy that I espouse, which is that kindness is hardcore, and that the best way for athletes to be able to break through barriers or clear hurdles is for them to be supported while they're trying to do it. I won't lie to them. I want them to become their own best coach. With every Guided Run, I want them to need me less and less. I want the athlete to own this. When I'm telling them to do something, they have the final decision.&nbsp;People develop a relationship with me. There are a lot of people I've never met, but we've gone through some stuff. When we do finally meet, it's often a very emotional meeting. That connection is so important. We're in a world where disconnection is only getting greater and greater. Knowing that this is a digital format and we're not in person, I wanted to make sure it was as human as possible. That means that like with human interactions, I ramble. I go off on tangents. I make really bad jokes. I have runs called the "It's OK 5K", the "Struggle Run", the "Tough Day, Easy Run", the "Thank You Run".&nbsp;My philosophy is that when you go for a run, it should be about more than running. I think that's why the connection with listeners has been so intense and durable over the years. You're often described as someone who can make a person believe they're a runner before they've ever even gone for a run. Where does that come from?Well, first, I really believe it, so that helps. But I also think it comes down to the understanding that coaches don't create anything—coaches uncover things. When you understand that, it makes your job so much easier. I don't have to create a runner; all I have to do is convince you that you can do things you don't believe you can do.&nbsp;I like to keep the bar low intentionally. I never say, "I can get you to run a marathon". I say, "I can get you to run from here to the end of the street". You don't believe that counts as a run. My job is to convince you that it does. The second you realise that counts as a run, you've experienced success. Inevitably, what you think next is: I could have gone a little further. I could have gone a little faster. I can do that again. And that's how it all starts.

One of your more famous quips is, "If you can't do the run you want to do, do the run you can do". What do you mean by that?As a runner myself, I used to sometimes put off runs until very late in the day, and then I'd get to a point where it was late and I wasn't going to be able to run for as long as I wanted to. I would convince myself that if I couldn't do the full run, what's the point?&nbsp;It was that all-or-nothing mentality. But there's so much something between all and nothing. If you've got 20 minutes, that's all you've got. So if you run for 20 minutes, you're actually giving it 100 percent of what you've got. How can you diminish yourself for giving it 100 percent of what you could do?This idea ended up in a Guided Run when I was working with Michael Orenstein, NRC's former head of product, and one of the guys who helped develop the runs early on. He was going to a pottery class and he said, "I'm not going to be able to run today; I've got to rush". And I said, "When's the class?" He told me it was 35 minutes from then and a 20-minute drive. So I said, "Why don’t you just go run for five minutes?" I remember him saying, "Five minutes? That's not a real run". And I said, "Five minutes is the only run you can do".I recorded the "Five-Minute Run", put that line in there and it blew up. That was about seven years ago, and it's one of my most quoted lines ever.

You have a book coming out called This Is About Running. This Is Not About Running. Can you talk about the book and elaborate more on the title?It's another one of those things I would casually say that kind of took off. I'd say it after making a point that was seemingly about running, but that was really about something bigger. It goes back to coaching kids. I had to make sure that the 90 minutes I had with them every day counted. I wanted them to have the opportunity to learn something about life. I felt like I would be a failure as a coach if the only thing they walked away with was the ability to go further or go faster.&nbsp;I wanted to give them strengths and habits they could carry into the rest of their lives. How you deal with struggle, how you have relationships with people, how you get through hard times, how you dig deeper, how you act as a supportive teammate to others—these are things that go on during practice. You have to get across to your athletes or your students that these are things you will take with you out of here. Don't leave this at practice. Bring this home."This is about running, this is not about running" has been the foundation of my coaching for 18 years. And the book embodies that—if&nbsp;you're a runner, whether a new runner or a long-time runner, you're going to end the book and you're going to be a better runner. But if you've never gone for a run before in your life, you're going to be a better person. It doesn't need to lead to you running.Regardless of where you're coming from—whether you're about to leave secondary school, going through a breakup, training for a marathon or taking on any other kind of challenge—this book is for you. It's about running. But it's also about much more than running.<ul><li><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="hvariant=44778258399266&amp;utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGn3pWCp6GXZKEdlPg-KM6Fa9gVZMj9-nNYb-kPhoN_LD5hC_IkZfYqBb6nGmw_aem_pCHhH0eUGgJ6B-I5oALmGg" target="_blank">Pre-order a copy of Coach B's book in the US</a> </li><li><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://lnkfi.re/yfzwUn?utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGnqCOF01UFfBXwJ8XK36zI9N7fDAttdKU2JBLcRLWR75KFBh8RYUAatrhGyYM_aem_Oa3G0bKKyFdPFbYhtx6OHA" target="_blank">Pre-order a copy of Coach B's book in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe</a> </li></ul>

Whether you're a first-time runner or practically a pro, you'll be able to use the advice from Chris Bennett—equal parts coach, philosopher and hype man.

Talking Craft

5 Questions With Nike Running's Coach Bennett

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 a Nike innovation, design and product editor. 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?

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Short Stories

Football on the pitch has always been inspired by the creative expression of street football. In tandem with the beautiful game's biggest event this summer, the electric energy of a global, community-led street football tournament is bringing the thrill of the game to its next era of players. Since launching in Los Angeles last June, Toma el Juego has made stops in Lima, Mexico, Santiago and Seoul.&nbsp;One year in, the grassroots tournament has grown to six continents, reaching more than 10,000 kids across 25 cities to date. Designed to showcase the world's best street footballers and inspire tomorrow's footballers to get in the game, Toma has done so much more. By breaking down the pay-to-play model, it's creating non-traditional pathways for countless young players who want to go pro but otherwise might not have the opportunity to play with a traditional club. "Toma is more than just a tournament, it's an experience and a community", says Caitlyn Penate, a Toma el Juego player. "Everyone is competitive but also supportive and welcoming, so it never feels toxic or overly serious. It's the kind of event where you leave with memories, friendships and a stronger love for the game". What's more, these athletes helped support the Nike Football brand campaign, "Rip the Script". "Toma gave me the chance to be treated like a real athlete", shares Mateo Alcantar, a Toma el Juego participant who was tapped to be featured in "Rip the Script". "I got a stage, a crowd—all the things the pros get—even though I'm a kid. Nike sees me as the future". In the month of June, street ballers around the world competed in tournament finals in cultural hubs such as LA, Mexico City, New York City, Seoul and Tokyo. Dive into the moments below from Toma el Juego tournaments around the world, and see how this generation is growing, evolving and fully owning the game.&nbsp;

The electric energy of a global, community-led street football tournament is bringing the thrill of the game to its next era of players.

Nike Football

One Year In, Toma Shows That Youth-Led Street Football Is the Future of the Game

"One of the biggest footballers in the world is going to read my letter. It's pretty crazy", says 12-year-old <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.footballbeyondborders.org/" target="_blank">Football Beyond Borders</a> (FBB) participant Esme, in response to the words she is penning to an England international footballer. On a slightly less grey afternoon than usual in Greater Manchester, six young players are writing missives to their football heroes, bringing a&nbsp;palpable brightness and energy that can be felt in this FBB classroom. Team England is going to football's biggest tourney, and so are these kids, through first-class post.

Well-wishes and personal stories from the young players would soon reach the palms of the England national team, thanks to an opportunity with Nike and its youth-sport community partner FBB. Nike and FBB have been official partners since 2019, when the Swoosh invested in the non-profit to help some 3,000 young people from underserved UK communities with mentorship, state-of-the-art facilities and leadership programmes. FBB also offers intangible support to its players, building a community for the participants and providing mentors and coaches dedicated to aiding them through some of the most vulnerable years of their lives. Esme, Darcie, Marcus, Emanuel, Izzy and Noah are all FBB participants in northern England. As we sit in FBB's office in Manchester ranking our favourite crisps, it's clear how the organisation has helped these individuals become well-rounded people, confident and assured. Despite having a new adult in their ranks, they're quick to make me feel welcome, excitedly showing me the facilities, asking about my travels and telling me about their own journeys through FBB.&nbsp; As we enter a classroom, the players' energy picks up as they look at Nike x Palace bespoke envelopes and letterhead spread across a table. FBB's work is done within local communities, but the outcome of this particular project will propel these young people's voices globally.

This moment comes as Nike is celebrating and recognising FBB by featuring the organisation's logo on <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/from-pitch-to-street-to-community-nike-defines-the-future-of-football-culture" target="_blank">England's 'The Three Lions by Palace' shirt within their X2 collaboration collection</a>, which the team wore in a friendly match ahead of this summer's tournament. While football fans worldwide watched the most star-studded teams, they were also introduced to FBB.&nbsp; After I ask the young players about the effect this organisation has had on their lives, Noah tells me that he loves starting his week with his FBB session. He describes how the programme has been pivotal in his growth; from meeting new people to finding confidence in himself to having a space where he can "escape from everything", FBB has solidified his love for football while showing him that there is more to learn from it.&nbsp; You see that in the hard numbers: FBB's latest impact report shows that 97 percent of its participants stayed in school, and they also passed their secondary-school exams at a rate up to 10 times higher than peers in national comparison groups. Three in five FBB participants improved their behaviour in school, and two in three reported that their mental well-being improved or stabilised. "These young people are at a time when they are finding themselves", says Deputy Chief Executive Ceylon Andi Hickman, who has been at the organisation for more than eight years. "We create a space and tools for them to do that".This holistic support is exactly what Nike wants to invest in too, says Vanessa Garcia-Brito, VP & chief impact officer. "Sport can be transformational for youth. That's exactly why we're investing in amazing partners like Football Beyond Borders, who support these young athletes, on and off the pitch", says Garcia-Brito. "We work with more than 200 community organisations around the world to create a future of youth sport that invites all kids in and makes play more accessible, fun and inclusive. It's an honour to celebrate their work in our neighbourhoods and communities globally on the world's biggest stage for the beautiful game. The impact will be enduring".

Today, that empowerment sees 12-year-old Emanuel get to write to defender John Stones, a pivotal player for the club Emanuel—a football lover through and through—supports. Emanuel's progress through FBB is evident at this moment. He has the self-assurance to pen a letter to someone he cares about, and the thoughtfulness to speak to their shared similarities. "I'm quite calm, and I think he is too", says Emanuel. "So I would suggest some calming music before kick-off". One beautiful thing about FBB's work is the connections it creates and the belief in potential that it instils in its players. I've seen it first hand, as a previous mentor for the organisation. I watched young people realise, some for the first time, that other people could believe in and want the best for them, both in the game and in their everyday life. That gentle reminder that someone has your back is a real comfort, whether it's in the form of mentorship or simply an adult asking you how your day is going. That's a constant that FBB offers. My FBB mentee and I, for example, are still in contact today. Seeing the strong and confident person he has become, I know that this group can follow in his steps. One young player who stands out in particular is 13-year-old Izzy, who wrote her letter to Jordan Henderson.&nbsp; While she gives her family thanks for her love for Liverpool, she reflects on why FBB has become so important to her. The organisation has instilled a sense of teamwork, she says, and a feeling that she and the other players are accomplishing something together.&nbsp; Izzy's advice for Henderson rang true and also held meaning for herself: "Just try your best, because that's always good enough". In a time when young people are under increasing pressure, the work done by FBB is reiterating this positive message. They are enough, they are able, they are deserving.&nbsp;

The young players' letters were all intentional, maybe none more so than 13-year-old Marcus's, who penned a letter to his namesake, Marcus Rashford. The younger Marcus has an infectious love for the game; he arrived to this letter writing, in fact, straight from a friendly FBB football match.&nbsp; Rashford's journey has been well documented, and young Marcus has been following it. His joy in writing to the star forward is evident in the way he shows off his notebook from Play Forward, a development programme created by Rashford for FBB, and it's based on self-belief and resilience.&nbsp; Marcus was specific in describing how he wanted Rashford to reflect on his importance, mirroring how FBB has helped him do the same. "Society has pushed stuff onto us", Marcus writes. "It might not be noticeable at first, but it definitely affects a person's personality". There are many adults who wouldn't be able to detail so vividly how they felt, let alone convey a message of liberation to one of their sport idols.

While this day's activity was novel and exciting, the weight and power of FBB is in the everyday ways it serves its young athletes. As Esme put it, "FBB helps me feel more like myself and gives me a safe space to talk to people. Every young person deserves to feel that way". It's not far-fetched to envision a world in which the future England football team is filled with former participants from FBB. Moments like this, along with the always-on work the organisation provides, serve as key reminders that all kids can have that dream.

What if you got to write to your football hero? These players, part of the community organisation Football Beyond Borders, knew exactly what to say when they penned letters to the England national team.

The Young Footballers Behind England's X2 Collection

In 1973, two years after the Nike brand was born and the first Swoosh adorned shoes, the nascent footwear company signed its first star runner. The phenomenal Oregon native held multiple American distance records, competed on athletics' greatest stage in Munich in 1972 and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated as "America's Distance Prodigy". The prodigy was Steve Prefontaine, America's best-known athlete at age 22. He possessed warrior determination and ran each race as if his life depended on it. His competitive fire, gutsy race tactics and inherent charisma charmed crowds and inspired up-and-coming runners to stick with the sport and give it their all.&nbsp;

On track for greatness

At 15, competing for Marshfield High School in Coos Bay, Oregon, Prefontaine set his first national record, running the 2-mile event in 8:41.5. He won back-to-back state cross-country championships in 1968–1969, and went undefeated in cross-country and athletics in his junior and senior years. Heavily recruited by top running schools during his senior year, Prefontaine was swayed by a handwritten note from University of Oregon head coach Bill Bowerman. "It said if I came to Oregon, he'd make me into the best distance runner ever", Prefontaine recalled. "That was all I needed to hear".

While training under Bowerman and assistant coach Bill Dellinger at Oregon beginning in 1969, Prefontaine won seven NCAA titles (three in cross-country, 1970–71, '73; and four in the three-mile distance in athletics, 1970–73). In Pac-8 Conference athletics competition, he won three-mile titles during each of his four years at Oregon, plus the mile in 1971. At home at Hayward Field during his collegiate career and beyond, he notched a remarkable 35 out of 38 victories between 1970 and 1975.&nbsp;

Prefontaine's ascendancy came at a time when running was far from mainstream. Drivers unwilling to share the road routinely yelled and threw rubbish at runners as they sped past. Prefontaine helped changed that attitude from annoyance to admiration. On the strength of his indisputable achievement and winning personality, he was the first person to make running cool. His association with Nike helped establish the Swoosh as a trusted running brand and transform the company from national shoe distributor to worldwide brand.

As a competitor at the University of Oregon, Prefontaine had considerable exposure to Blue Ribbon Sports and Nike footwear (at the time, products were branded Nike but the company name was still the original Blue Ribbon Sports, or BRS). In the summer of 1973, Nike co-founders Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman extended a $5,000 yearly stipend to help offset Prefontaine's training expenses and to relieve him of occasional bartending shifts at the popular Paddock tavern. In between athletics workouts and long runs along the McKenzie River, Prefontaine put in time at the BRS shop in Eugene. Prefontaine became well versed in BRS and its products and he was an ace pitchman. He printed up business cards with the title National Director of Public Affairs, and began travelling around the Pacific Northwest sharing training tips and encouragement to athletes while introducing them to new Nike running shoes.&nbsp;

The start of Swoosh sports marketing

"The amazing thing about Pre was he was a hell of a student of the sport and he just loved digging and learning about things", said Geoff Hollister, a runner who also competed at the University of Oregon under Bowerman and became Nike's third employee. Hollister managed the BRS shop in Eugene, and he and Prefontaine became close friends who shared interests in architecture, sports cars and, of course, running.&nbsp; The pair visited secondary schools, universities, sports shops and running clubs. "Every place we went, Pre would take time to go for a jog with the kids. He would analyse their form and talk to them", Hollister said. Prefontaine easily related to teens and was a natural spokesman for the sport. In his book "Out of Nowhere", Hollister remembered a talk Prefontaine had with students at West Albany:&nbsp;

Prefontaine took that same personal approach when connecting with athletes from afar, helping to create an early blueprint for Nike's sports marketing. He introduced the sport's elite to Nike products, sending shoes, along with personalised notes and his business card, to running friends around the world. "It was totally his own idea", said Hollister. Prefontaine dispatched boxes to Mary Decker in San Diego; New Zealand's John Walker and Dick Quax; to Brendan Foster in England; and Kenya's Kip Keino. "All those people ended up wearing Nike shoes", said Hollister. In April of 1975, Prefontaine sent a note and a pair of '73 Nike Bostons to the relatively unknown runner Bill Rodgers. The shoes' arrival created a stir among his teammates at the Greater Boston Track Club. "You'd hear about Nike shoes or see pictures, but it was the first pair that I'd seen in person", recalled Alberto Salazar, who was a secondary school student in Boston and a teammate of Rodgers at the time. "He brought them to the track, and we were all holding them and passing them around. Everyone was real excited not only because it was a Nike shoe—which was kind of neat because it was different—but because Steve Prefontaine had sent the shoes with a note". A few weeks later, Rodgers wore them in the local city marathon. He finished first.

Legacy

Prefontaine is also remembered for furthering the cause of American amateur athletes, who were boxed in by the lopsided rules of the American Athletics Union (AAU). In the 1970s, athletes who wanted to participate in the Olympic Games were required to remain amateurs, making it difficult but necessary to train at their sport and earn a living doing something else. The AAU controlled runners' competition schedules and took the lion's share of appearance fees due to athletes. Prefontaine gave up offers upwards of $200,000 to go pro to preserve his eligibility for Montreal 1976, and instead collected a $3 per diem—the maximum amount allowed by the AAU.&nbsp;

He continually challenged the AAU and spoke out about the inequity, even when it put his eligibility to compete in jeopardy. Prefontaine preserved his amateur status but he never made it to Montreal. His last competition was 29 May 1975, in a race he helped organise against members of the Finnish national team and distance heavy hitters such as Frank Shorter. Competing in the 5000m, Prefontaine trailed Shorter the first two miles, then, with three laps to go, accelerated to a 63-second pace. In front of a Hayward Field crowd of 7,000, he finished with a 60.3 last lap and a winning time of 13:23.8, just off his own American record. He ran a victory lap, attended the University of Oregon athletics awards banquet and spent the rest of the evening hanging out and celebrating with friends. The biggest athletics star in the country came to a tragic end later, just after midnight, while driving home—his life cut short by a car accident at age 24.&nbsp; His legacy is multifaceted. To generations of athletes at all levels, he embodies the philosophy of training incredibly hard and going all out in competition. For Nike, he was both a muse as an athlete and a trailblazer who pioneered a highly original and personal way of inspiring athletes with the brand. For fellow runners hamstrung by the AAU, Prefontaine was a leader who helped turn the tide towards professionalism. After Prefontaine's death, others joined Nike in taking up his cause, ultimately leading to the abolishment of the AAU by the US Congress in 1978. It was perhaps his most important legacy off the track.

Prefontaine's competitive fire, gutsy race tactics and inherent charisma charmed crowds and inspired up-and-coming runners to stick with the sport and give it their all.

Nike Heritage

How Steve Prefontaine set the pace for Nike

At this year's Hyrox World Championships in Stockholm, Dylan Scott has unfinished business.One of the sport's most ferocious competitors, the former doubles world champion finished third at last year's Championships in Chicago. The Nike athlete, who now has his sights set on the coveted individual title, has competed at every World Championship since entering Hyrox in 2021. Each year, he has finished closer to the top. He arrives in Stockholm intent on finishing the job.&nbsp;That he's here at all is remarkable. At 17, a career-altering injury derailed his dreams of becoming an elite runner and the future he'd always imagined for himself. Years later, after rebuilding both physically and mentally, he discovered Hyrox almost by accident. What followed was a steady rise through the sport's ranks that eventually caught Nike's attention. Last year, another long-held aspiration became a reality when he signed with the brand he'd loved for years.He'll tell you that he's not the fastest or the strongest. But Scott has something that's harder to manufacture: grit.&nbsp;Here, in his own words, he reflects on resilience, identity and what it means to win the right way.

I come from Ninety Six, South Carolina—a town of about 2,000 people—and that place shaped the athlete I became.&nbsp;It's actually a revolutionary war battleground, and a lot of our training was out there at the historical site. I ran so many miles on that cross-country course that I could close my eyes and run it in my head. The secondary school track wasn't even six lanes—it was five and a half, because you got to the back, and half of it fell off a hill. The weights in the weight room were all rusty. It wasn't this pretty thing you get with Hyrox, this production. It was grit.&nbsp;You don't always have access to the best things, the best facilities, but if you put your head down, you can start climbing that ladder. I came from doing workouts with tractor chains in the yard to standing on podiums at world championships. That's pretty cool.When you come from a really small town and ascend to a world stage, it instills humility and gratefulness. You start experiencing all of these things that are so big, with so much grandeur to them, but you know where you came from.

It really broke me down as a person when I lost the ability to run. I got injured right before I turned 18. I spent my entire last year of sixth form either on crutches or in a cast, and at points in a wheelchair. It happened when I was running on a treadmill watching the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/how-steve-prefontaine-set-the-pace-for-nike" target="_blank">Prefontaine</a> movie. My iPod fell, I did a weird shuffle step and within 15 minutes my right foot was completely dead. Until that point, I had almost inextricably tied my entire identity to running. It was my emotional outlet, my social outlet, my sense of who I was. My sense of purpose was stripped away. I had to sit down and ask: "Who am I? What do I like? What else is going to occupy this space?"&nbsp;Over the four- or five-year span of recovering, my understanding of myself as a person grew so much. Looking back, I'm actually really, really thankful. As much pain as the injury caused me emotionally and physically, it created something in me as a person. It changed who I was and my entire perspective on life.Partnering with Nike was a dream I had that I'd almost let die. I'm so happy I didn't give up. The path I'd always imagined—running collegiately, earning it that way—wasn't going to happen after my injury. At some point, you have to look yourself in the mirror and go, "You're not enough at this. You're going to have to pick a different avenue". That fire had really dwindled down to where there was almost nothing left. But for some reason, it didn't completely burn out.When I did performance testing 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>, I was working with people who could give me insights I couldn't facilitate on my own at home. The things I could find out about my body, my abilities, things I should change. All of that within that building, it's astronomical. It really could be the difference between where I am now and where I need to get to win it all.

I don't just want to be a winner for the sake of being a champion. I was drawn to Nike because of that same spirit. Nike wins. That's what they do. But they want to win the right way.&nbsp;With respect for the sport and my competition, I'm going to be the best I can be. I'm going to compete against the best competition. But I'm not going to race dirty. I'm not going to sh*t-talk you publicly or try to belittle you. I'm going to create an environment around the race where whoever wins won it fair and square, and against the best version of their competition. I want to be a champion where people say, "This guy did it the right way".I've always been willing to go to a dark place in training, but I've learned not to go there too often. A lot of athletes in sports like Hyrox really value the ability to suffer and sometimes test it too much. You keep checking in: "Am I tough enough? Can I hurt enough?" And what tends to happen is you just burn your body out, because there's only so often you can go to that well and actually handle it and recover from it.Still, I've always told myself that when I refuse to go to those places in training anymore, that's when I'll retire. When I'm at the 45-minute point of a workout, knowing that at 55 minutes we're going to enter that spot, I think, This is going to be hell. But today I'm choosing hell, because I still want to be a world champion.

I give a lot of kudos to my wife, Maria, for pushing me to be uncomfortable and not cling to the past. I was working a corporate job and I was afraid to move on from it because of the security it represented. She said, "You can do this. Please take the step". I was making it work before, but there were leaks in the ship. We're in a new boat now. It sails a lot better. Fewer holes.When you're around your kid, you get to rediscover things through their eyes. Having my son, August, has brought so much joy and perspective into my life. He doesn't care if I'm on top of the podium or not, he just yells for Dada, and that's it. Sometimes right before a race, if I'm in a weird emotional state, I'll think, Let me just hold my son for a second. Twenty seconds of a big hug. And then I'm like, All right, we're good, let's go. Sometimes that's all you need.I value effort over almost anything else. Outcomes take care of themselves when you put enough into them. I want my son to see that. He sees fitness as a lifestyle, he travels to races with us. The first beach he ever went to was in France. I want his life to be full of movement and culture, and I want him to see his dad doing it the right way.I never thought I'd be a world champion or even close to that, but as I stacked bricks over time, I kept getting closer. I kept moving up the podium and now I'm at a point where it's like, It wouldn't make sense if you didn't apply yourself, didn't try. You're too close to it. So the mindset has shifted from just doing something and happening to be good at it to committing to and pursuing being a world champion.

The Nike athlete has his sights set on the coveted individual title and knows exactly what will get him on top of the podium: grit.

Nike Training

For the win

Dylan Scott on the Slow, Steady Work of Becoming a Hyrox Champion

It was 14 July 1994, Brazil and Italy were about to play for the most coveted trophy in football. The temperature at the Rose Bowl had climbed past 27 degrees, and by the time the two teams walked out of the tunnel, there were more than 94,000 people in the stands and billions more watching from around the world.Among them was Phil Knight, co-founder and CEO of the world's largest athletic footwear company. Nike had already transformed running and basketball, but football, despite captivating the world, remained a great sport and cultural frontier.As he watched, Knight noticed something beyond the score. The Brasileiros—eight of them in Nike Tiempos—played with a quality he couldn't quite name. We know it now as joga bonito, Portuguese for "play beautifully", a style that is <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-debuts-rip-the-script-a-step-inside-the-universe-of-nike-football" target="null">expressive, creative, joyful, unscripted</a>.Two days later, Knight pulled aside his global sports marketing director and said three words that would reshape the company's relationship with football forever:&nbsp;"I want Brazil".

The Mandate

To understand the significance of what came next, it helps to know where Nike stood going into the summer of 1994. Football—still called "soccer" inside the offices of Nike's headquarters near Beaverton, Oregon—had existed at the edges of the company for years. There were shoes. There were player and team relationships and some moderate success in the UK and Scandinavia. But on a global scale, Nike's influence on the sport barely registered. It was, by most internal accounts, an afterthought."We meant absolutely nothing in the sport to anybody", said Sandy Bodecker, Nike Football's first general manager.He was about to change that.In the early 1990s, Bodecker—who&nbsp;would go on to be a pivotal teammate, later leading projects such as the resurgence of <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/this-science-backed-sports-comic-is-made-to-better-your-mental-health" target="_blank">Nike SB</a> and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/sandy-bodecker-the-man-behind-nike-breaking2" target="_blank">Nike's Breaking2 moonshot</a>—had&nbsp;been a trusted forward-thinker in Nike's footwear R&D operation. For years, he and a few others had been making the case that football was a sport the brand couldn't afford to ignore. But up until that point, there hadn't been the will to act on it. When Knight's directive came down after the 1994 final, Bodecker finally had the mandate he needed. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/topics/nike-football-2026" target="_blank">Nike Football</a> was becoming its own division and he would lead it.The goal was simple: become a force in the sport by the time France hosted the tournament in 1998. They had four years to make it happen.

What followed was the assembly of a small, intentional core team, including an apparel director, apparel developer, creative director, sports marketing lead and global sports marketing director, among others. They were a unified force and the odds were stacked against them. Nike had no deep heritage in the sport and faced no small amount of scepticism from European football insiders about how an American company run out of Oregon would attempt to serve the world's game.Bodecker chose to see it differently. He embraced the scepticism. The absence of history, he decided, wasn't a liability. It was the whole point."We wanted to be the new heritage of the sport", he told the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-spaces-sports-design-innovation-performance" target="_blank">Department of Nike Archives (DNA)</a> in a series of interviews prior to his passing in 2018. "We liked that because we didn't have an old heritage".That didn't mean ignoring football's history. It meant knowing it well enough to go beyond it.&nbsp;Whatever <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/topics/nike-football-2026" target="_blank">Nike Football</a> was going to become, it would succeed by honouring that history—and&nbsp;then building something entirely its own.

The Foundation

The team got to work immediately. The first order of business was securing a deal with the US Soccer Federation, an ideal partner to help Nike support and serve the sport and its athletes on the brand's home turf. After months of relationship building, Nike was able to ink the deal, which covered both the men's and women's national programmes, ending a 28-year tenure with the team's previous sponsor, a major competitor.&nbsp;With this single stroke, Nike was embedded in American football at every level—able to work with its greatest athletes and the soon-to-be greatest and to innovate for their needs.

Around the same time, Nike made another essential move, signing an athlete who would come to define Nike's relationship with the women's game for a generation.&nbsp;An intrepid sports marketing executive had approached Mia Hamm two years earlier after watching the University of North Carolina football star score two goals in six minutes on a soggy day in Chapel Hill at the 1992 NCAA Championship.The contract was worked out in the basement of the Rams Head Rathskeller Bar in Chapel Hill, where the marketing exec sketched out details on a napkin and carried it back to Oregon to go about finding the money to honour it.&nbsp;

After Nike signed the US federation, the brand could make its commitment to women's football more formal. For instance, Nike treated Hamm and the US women's team as genuine collaborators, asking how they wanted their apparel to fit, developing footwear designed specifically for women's feet and listening in ways the sport hadn't seen before."They were doing a lot of research in the differences between men's and women's feet", said Hamm during a DNA interview. "They talked to me a lot about footwear and what I liked and what some of the other players like. The respect that they had for us made a huge difference. It makes you proactive. It makes you want to get out there and see what else you can do as an individual".When the apparel came back, it reflected everything the players had asked for. For Hamm, it added up to something that felt less like a sponsorship and more like a partnership. And it left a lasting impression on the entire team.Years later, a deal that began scribbled on a bar napkin would culminate in a building at <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/how-nike-built-its-world-headquarters" target="_blank">Nike's world headquarters</a> bearing her name.

The Deal

With the federation signed and Hamm inked, the new division turned to the prize that had started everything.Knight had said he wanted Brazil. Now, it was time to deliver.This would require something beyond hard work or ambition: patience. In Brazil, relationships come before deals and Nike's team learned that quickly. For two years, they showed Brazil why they should partner with the brand. Repeated meetings; follow-up calls; and, most important, listening.&nbsp;It was pure, dogged determination, the kind that comes from having a single, unwavering goal.In July 1996, the work paid off. The Nike team signed a contract to cover every Brazil national squad. To date, it was the sport's most monumental deal, and for the Swoosh, the Brazil ethos would set the tone for what Nike Football meant: creative, attacking, instinctive and joyful—<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/behind-the-scenes-of-nike-football-rip-the-script-brand-film" target="null">a style that the brand still stands for and supports today</a>.

The day the deal was announced, Nike's stock dropped 5 percent. The market was grappling with the brand in unproven territory. Inside Nike, however, nobody was losing sleep. The team that had spent two years flying to Brazil for lunch understood exactly what they had secured. "It was an incredibly galvanising, exciting proposition", said Bodecker. "It's the New York Yankees or Boston Celtics". The stock would come around.They were so sure, in fact, that after the papers were signed, a couple of the deal's key players walked into a nearby bar and ordered the most expensive bottle of cognac they could find. As luck would have it, two of the most powerful figures in European football—men firmly in Nike's biggest competitor's corner—walked in and took a seat nearby. One of the Nike men recognised them instantly but said nothing."I had to control myself", Nike's then global sports marketing director recalled. "I would have loved to whisper in one of their ears, 'We just signed Brazil'".

"Au Revoir"

Signing Brazil wasn't the only thing that made 1996 a landmark year. That summer, at the Atlanta Olympics, the investments Nike had been making in football paid off on the biggest stage in sport.&nbsp;The US Women's national team—led by Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and Briana Scurry—won gold in the first Olympic women's football final, drawing the largest crowd ever to watch a women's sporting event in the United States. On the men's side, Nigeria, which had just been signed the year before, claimed gold against Argentina. Two Nike teams. Two gold medals.&nbsp;It was also the year Nike Football stepped into its creative identity.In April, the company released "Good vs Evil", a film that pitted a team of the world's best players against the Devil's own squad on a burning pitch in an ancient Tunisian coliseum. The shoot ran for approximately 16 consecutive nights, with a record budget at the time.

While earlier ads like "The Wall" had introduced Nike to the football world, this was the first to catch the attention of a global audience. Several countries deemed it too violent to air in prime time. It became a cultural phenomenon anyway.In the closing image, Eric Cantona, one of the world's most charismatic footballers at the time, scored the decisive goal against the Devil, flipped his collar and delivered a single icy line: "Au revoir". Across Europe, kids were flipping their collars and re-enacting the moment in backyards and playgrounds.A month after it aired, Glenn Cole, the Wieden+Kennedy creative director behind the film, found himself in a taxi in Europe. When the driver learned he worked in advertising, he began telling him about a commercial he'd seen on television—the "one with the Devil". His son, he said, asked him to go out in the backyard every night and stand on the far side of the yard while the boy kicked a ball at his chest, playing the Devil and trying to make him blow up."That's when I realised this actually captured the average guy's imagination", said Cole.

The Ad Nobody Expected

If "Good vs Evil" had announced Nike's arrival in football, "Airport" took it to the next level.The concept was deceptively simple: the newly signed Brazil national team, killing time before a flight, breaks into an impromptu match through the terminal. No villain. No Devil. No burning pitch. Just footballers doing what footballers do when no one is watching: playing and laughing, alive with the particular joy that had made Brazil the world's most beloved team."I always thought the secret to success was, whatever people are expecting, go the other way", said Cole. "Nobody saw 'Good vs Evil' coming. It was really dark and heavy, and I think people were waiting for the sequel to that".&nbsp;The misdirection worked. But it didn't come easy.The bulk of the shoot took place at the Rio de Janeiro International Airport between Christmas and New Year's Eve 1997, with director John Woo at the helm. Nike had negotiated permission to film once the terminal closed for the night.&nbsp;Everything was in place—except the talent.The national team, on holiday in Brazil, arrived four hours late and the logistics were further complicated by the nature of the set itself. Woo was a celebrated film director, but commercial shoots run on athletes' schedules, not director's schedules. On top of that, he was working through severe heat exhaustion.Nike brought in Hollywood producer Lawrence Bender to help manage the chaos.&nbsp;What emerged from the mayhem, however, was something unlike anything Nike had made before. Instead of a cast of global stars or a dramatic storyline, "Airport" simply showed Brazil being Brazil: unscripted, buoyant and completely themselves. It was the first time Nike had ever built a campaign around a team rather than an individual. Bodecker called it a "watershed".&nbsp;"When you transcend the sport and start seeping into popular culture, that's what Nike does best", said one of the Nike Football lead teammates. "Being able to do that with football, which was the one sport that Nike hadn't really been able to crack, was a huge accomplishment. After that, it was off to the races".

Finding a Philosophy

As the ads were capturing the world's attention, Nike was putting language to something that was already taking shape around them.At the time, there was a feeling inside the sport that football was losing something—becoming more predictable, more cautious, less alive. Pierre-Laurent Baudey, the football-obsessed Frenchman Nike had brought in to lead its advertising efforts, felt it acutely.&nbsp;When Nike asked him to define what the brand stood for in the game, he said he'd been waiting for the question.To find the answer, he travelled to schools and clubs across Europe, asking kids where they thought the game should go. What came back, distilled through months of conversation, echoed what was already unfolding in the team they'd just signed: creativity, spontaneity and joy. Football played with freedom rather than fear."It was something hard to define", said Baudey. "But at the time we just signed Ronaldo and he was becoming this uber star. He was a gifted, visionary, passionate player and added a dimensional soul to his game".They called it "Brilliant Football"—a philosophy that argued the "beautiful game" should actually be beautiful. Inside Nike, it was captured in a single Portuguese word: alegria or "joy of life".&nbsp;Brazil was its living embodiment. It would shape everything Nike did in football for the next decade.

A Different Kind of Boot

By 1997, the pieces were falling into place. The team was signed. The films were resonating. The philosophy had taken shape. What Nike needed now was a boot that would match the ambition of everything around it.To get there, Nike had first needed to solve a more specific problem: how to make a boot that elite European players would want to wear. The answer came from the foothills of the Dolomites.&nbsp;A couple of years earlier, as the football deals were unfolding, Nike had sent Mark Wasley, an expat living in Italy, to a facility in Montebelluna, Italy. The area had been the epicentre of European shoemaking for generations, home to the world's ski boot manufacturing hub and the birthplace of other well-known football brands.&nbsp;The operation was built around a fundamentally different, artisan philosophy. In Asia, factories produced everything under one roof. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/inside-the-italian-workspaces-where-we-craft-the-nike-mercurial-boot" target="_blank">In Montebelluna</a>, every component was sourced to a specialist; a vendor who made nothing but sockliners had spent a career perfecting that single craft. The result was a partnership that created a level of craftsmanship that would change what Nike could do in football footwear.With the Montebelluna collaboration running, Nike was ready to attempt something genuinely new.

Tim Smith, a Nike PLM with a degree in creative writing, took a track spike, removed the spikes, screwed in football studs and sketched it to look like a football boot. That crude prototype was the beginning of what would become the Mercurial.The shoe was built around <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/ronaldo-r9-interview-mentorship" target="_blank">Ronaldo</a>, specifically around the way he played. The long stretches of stillness, the sudden violent acceleration. Nike surveyed elite under-17 players across seven European countries, choosing them because none of them had shoe contracts and they would give honest answers. Their priorities became the engineering brief.The most consequential decision was the upper. Up until that point, quality football boots were made with leather, and synthetic materials were typically considered for knockoffs. Nike worked with a Japanese company to develop something called KNG-100, a synthetic leather that didn't absorb water, didn't stretch and was lighter and thinner than anything the sport had seen. A ball-control coating sourced from Italian racing motorcycle chassis gave it unprecedented feel on the ball. At 1.75 millimetres, the plate was nearly half the standard thickness.Nike took prototypes to members of the Brazil national team and told them it was the best leather they had ever used, not mentioning that it wasn't actually leather at all. The players loved them so much they refused to return them.

When it came time to name this new boot (which had internally been called the "Ronaldo Ultra Speed"), Smith and his teammates consulted Greek mythology books and were considering the name "Ultravelox". Smith was driving home from work one evening when the word "mercurial" popped into his head.&nbsp;"One of the definitions is 'quickly changing in nature', which is perfect because if you look at Ronaldo, he's walking around waiting for the right moment to strike and then when he does, he's a different player", said Smith. "He accelerates".<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/built-for-speed-nike-unveils-new-mercurial-vapor-and-superfly-football-boots" target="_blank">The Mercurial</a> debuted at the 1998 tournament in France on Ronaldo's feet—blue, yellow and chrome, the first significantly coloured boot the sport had seen. "That was an absolutely defining moment in my involvement in football", recalled Dave Daly, Europe's football marketing manager.&nbsp;"We made a shoe that was so different to what anybody had ever seen before and it was absolutely fantastic. It wasn't bogus. It wasn't just a bizarre, cranky, crazy Nike idea. It was actually real, it was authentic and it was beautiful, and players absolutely died to be in it".Nike estimated they would make around 20,000 pairs in the first year. They closed the year with 80,000.

France, 1998

Nike arrived in Paris that summer outfitting six national teams: Brazil, the United States, Italy, Nigeria, Portugal and the Netherlands. But the most visible statement wasn't in the stadium. At the Arche de Défense, one of Paris's most iconic landmarks, the company built a 70,000-square-foot interactive space called Nike Park with pitch turf; interactive drills; a retail store; and, at its centre, in a glass case, the 1994 trophy on loan from Brazil. On the arch itself—a grand structure that sits on the same axis as the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysées—Nike erected a giant model of <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/built-for-speed-nike-unveils-new-mercurial-vapor-and-superfly-football-boots" target="_blank">the Mercurial</a>.&nbsp;One of the most recognisable landmarks in France, draped in the Swoosh."We were new to football and needed to make a splash", said Mark Pilkenton, who oversaw Nike Park's construction.

France won that year, and while it wasn't Brazil with the trophy, Nike's support of the sport was clear. The brand that had arrived in football as an outsider four years earlier had become an undeniable presence in the game.This summer, the tournament returns to American soil for the first time since that hot July afternoon at the Rose Bowl. The sport Nike once called an afterthought is now one of the most significant chapters in the company's history—and one of the most powerful forces in the game.

From signing Brazil and US Soccer to debuting iconic ads and the first Mercurial boot, the period from 1994 to 1998 laid the foundation for Nike's presence and philosophy in the beautiful game.

The Four Years That Launched Nike Football

After winning 73 singles titles, 14 doubles titles, four Olympic gold medals and reigning as the No. 1 women's singles tennis player in the world for a collective six years, Serena Williams decided she was ready for a new challenge. In 2022, she announced that she was "evolving away" from tennis, playing her final match at the US Open that September against Ajla Tomljanovic. A retirement this was not: by that point, Serena Ventures, her venture capital firm, had raised more than $100 million dollars for start-ups focused on female and POC consumers, and she wanted to devote more time to growing that work even more. She was also 40, wanted another child and knew that she didn't want to be pregnant and competing again. (She had her first child, Olympia, in 2017, eight months after she won the Australian Open, her 23rd Grand Slam, while eight weeks pregnant; she didn't drop a single set.) Throughout her farewell tour, reporters and fans asked if she'd ever come back. She didn't say no. Now four years, and another daughter, Adira, later, the Nike athlete since 2003 is back on court. Her return competition is fitting—the Queen's Club tournament in London—where she'll play doubles. Tennis has evolved since Williams took her pause, but then again, so has she. Below, in her own words, Williams shares her new outlook, why it's important for her daughters to see her return and why she's always believed in herself.

This return is not about wins or losses. I just want to have fun. I want to travel and I want to enjoy myself. I've always enjoyed tennis, but this time it's from a different angle. Every time I watched a tournament, I missed it. I miss the atmosphere. I miss the court.&nbsp; Still, what I'm looking for in a doubles partner is someone that wants to win and can win. I guess that hasn't changed! I'm choosing doubles because I'm not putting any pressure on myself to do singles right now. This is a good way to start for me.&nbsp; The only different thing in my training now is that I don't get angry. Although, yesterday, I did want to crack my racket. But I thought, 'Serena, you're absolutely not going to do that'. In the past, I would have. This moment is for my daughters too. I want them to see what a strong woman I am, who I am. Now, they'll be able to see what I do and the impact that I've had. There are so many different things that define excellence. But a lot of people don't understand the full work. We see lots of results that are really fast, things that seem like they happened overnight. But there's always some sort of sacrifice. To gain something, you have to not have something. You have to decide what it is. And sometimes, it's at a cost. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Pressure can feel very heavy, but lighter if you step up to it and own it. There's this old saying, "He who doubts, loses". Doubt is for those who don't want to win. You can't doubt yourself. I work very hard, but I also know I'm at a different stage in my life, so I learn how to get more bang for my buck without sacrificing my hard work.

When I first started playing tennis, I had to fight to just belong. As a woman, you have to fight to show what you have done, and what you can do. And not necessarily fight, but "calmly and confidently remind". When you're sure of yourself, it's OK to walk away and say, "This isn't for me right now". I'm very fortunate that now I get to pick and choose the battles that I decide to fight. Some of those battles are great, especially if they involve my children, but other battles end with me saying, "You know what? Not my day today". To stay on top, you have to welcome change. You have to pivot. Take learning AI, for example—I pivoted instantly. I don't wait, I don't think, I just do. That's how I've always been. Especially with my career, I've always thought, oh, Roger's doing that? I'm pivoting immediately. That's why I had the ability to play for so many years, I was always open to change. I changed my racket and my strings at a time where no one was doing it, and people thought that was really crazy. It was unheard of at the time. I did it, and then suddenly everyone else did it. My partnership with Nike is all about building and creating new. I can see Nike's got back to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/the-handshake-that-started-it-all" target="_blank">those roots of Phil</a>, starting each idea with "<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/phil-mccartney-is-showing-what-innovation-means-inside-nike-now" target="_blank">how do we help athletes</a>". I love what's happening in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nikeskims-introduces-studio-stretch-material-innovation-collection" target="_blank">NikeSKIMS</a>. It embodies innovation. When I first saw that, I called Kim and said, "This is genius". I have always believed in myself. Other people believing in you is fantastic, but let's face it, that doesn't always happen. And there's a lot of times where people will say things that make you not believe in yourself. Having your self-belief is so important. Then, it doesn't matter what happens—it won't change your foundation. It doesn't mean you self-believe in everything, because, quite frankly, I don't. I always have to go to my foundation and say, "This is what I'm great at, this is what I'm good at—now let's build on it".&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

The tennis champion has a new outlook, an important "why", and a belief in herself that's never gone away.

Nike Tennis

In Her Return to the Court, Serena Williams Reminds Us Why She's the GOAT

It's 2015, and touring Nike's world campus in Beaverton, Oregon, is Kobe Bryant, 6 foot 6 inches of genius basketball talent, and energetically curious about what his partner sports brand is up to in its product innovation spaces. The creator of Mamba Mentality wanders up to Nike teammates at work and asks, "Are you creating that epic sh*t?"That phrase from Kobe has become <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-new-innovation-engine-announcement" target="_blank">the North Star</a> for Nike's EVP and chief innovation, design and product officer, Phil McCartney. It's a call to action, and it spells out a mission as important to him as <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/bill-bowerman-nike-s-original-innovator" target="_blank">Bill Bowerman</a>'s mandate that the company should make athletes* better. "We've got the authenticity of Bowerman in the roots of the company, plus the athlete irreverence from Kobe, so put that together and it becomes a standard of excellence", says McCartney. It's the way he measures products: is it epic? Does it make athletes better? "If it doesn't, then we shouldn't do it".

Before McCartney came into his role in June 2025, Nike had no shortage of ideas and sport-science research. What it needed was focus, the muscle memory to turn its athlete insights, science-backed data and design and product ideas into intentional, sharper, more epic swings. A little chutzpah couldn't hurt either. "I wanted us to get our swagger back, to be more responsive, have a competitive spirit and an athlete's mindset about the work", says McCartney.A clear strategy, ruthless prioritisation and licence to dream came through in short order. Last September, the Innovation team organised as "IDP"—Innovation, Design, Product—an acronym that McCartney says belies the creation process: before his team does anything, they have to innovate,&nbsp;then&nbsp;design, and the product is the outcome. At the same time, the company launched its <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/amy-montagne-the-force-returning-nike-to-sport" target="_blank">Sport Offense</a>—organising teams enterprise-wide by sport to better serve the athlete. His two immediate goals in his role: connect <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/meet-the-nike-mind-team" target="_blank">product back to science</a>, taking advantage of the company's ability to scrutinise and study like no one else, and shore it up with the art of athleticism. And build a deeper, holistic approach to innovating that better connects teams across NIKE, Inc., creating one engine that accelerates product creation.

McCartney says he's at his happiest in creative spaces on campus—the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/inside-the-serena-williams-building" target="_blank">Serena Williams Building</a>, the Michael Jordan Building, the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/inside-the-nike-sports-research-lab-lebron-james-innovation-center" target="_blank">LeBron James Innovation Center</a> and Converse spaces, and the Bowerman Footwear Lab, where he says teams create magic every day. This 8,361-square-metre space tucked inside the campus's Mia Hamm Building is an imagination machine for sneaker creation. Amidst heaps of colourful bolts of fabric and foot lasts, McCartney is like a kid at Disneyland, grinning at the technological abilities at the company's fingertips. "This footwear lab changes how people think about creating product and designing—it's&nbsp;our test kitchen", explains McCartney, emphasising that&nbsp;this&nbsp;is the space where you're reminded that Nike is a product company serving athletes through new solutions. One of the most exciting parts of the space to McCartney is its real-time prototyping capabilities and the ability to tinker with a product idea for an athlete <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/how-nike-built-its-world-headquarters" target="_blank">visiting campus</a>, then instantly modify the proto based on their feedback.That innovator's spirit goes hand in hand with another classic Nike strategy: get out into the communities and know your people. "I want us to go grassroots again, to operate a hyperlocal model and be so connected with the athletes that we can anticipate their next need", says McCartney. Sitting in his fifth-floor office in the Sebastian Coe Building, he pulls out his computer and flashes up a deck that goes deep on his innovation teams' three major product focuses for Nike's next fiscal year. You can see, he explains, how these three product constructs can be adapted by region, by sport and by athlete. The tight line-up didn't start this way, he adds. Winnowing down the most innovative products to these three constructs took months of killing good ideas in favour of great ones, then punching those up to be epic.One step to making this a reality, says McCartney, is to bring key partners along. He's fresh off a two-week trip to Asia, where he says he worked directly with factory owners he's known for 20 years. "We walked through the steps to accelerate my teams' ideas from concept to final product faster and more efficiently", he says. "This is an essential part of revving our innovation engine and solving challenges in real time".

Like everyone else he knew growing up, McCartney wanted to be a footballer. The sport was the lifeblood of Newcastle, the city in northern England where he was raised. Football was also one of the clearest paths out of the working-class town, a place where most people left secondary school after 16 to start earning money. University was something that other people did, and opportunities elsewhere, like the US, seemed about as close as the moon. So, along with the rest of the boys he knew, McCartney joined his school football team, shoring up dreams of kicking his way into the Premier League.After his first few uninspiring games, his dad suggested he try something else. This was young Phil's first lesson in editing and prioritising, walking away from an OK idea for a better one. McCartney tried a running club, set up by local parents to keep their kids out of trouble. The families operated on a tight budget—his&nbsp;father installed drywall and his mother worked in youth community building—and the rule within the club was that once you outgrew your trainers, you passed them down to a younger kid. McCartney was soon in possession of a pair of bright orange-red sneakers, replete with a yellow Swoosh as electric as lightening. "Imagine getting that as an 11-year-old kid", he says. He loved them so much, he slept in them. "I had no idea what Nike was, didn't know it was American, never even heard of Oregon". But he knew how the shoes made him feel: invincible, strong, fast, capable.&nbsp;The first race he ever won—1,500 metres on the track—was in Nikes.He punctuates this story by pulling out a pair of those exact Nike Flame spikes on a January morning in Glo's Cafe at the base of the LeBron James Innovation Building on Nike's <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/how-nike-built-its-world-headquarters" target="_blank">Philip H. Knight Campus</a>. (These aren't the same shoes he had as a youth, but rather a pair he tracked down later on.) They're more than just leather and suede: the shoes are a reminder of his duality—who he is and who he's been—and what has kept him going. The kid who filled his hours doodling sneakers; the teen who started working in retail to help support his family; the young man who applied for his dream job at Nike, becoming a Nike EKIN (because these experts are supposed to know the brand's products backwards and forwards); and now, the leader who sets its strategy for innovation, design and product.McCartney knows persistence, intelligence and hard work brought him to where he is today, but for years, he says, he couldn't help feelings of imposter syndrome, of thinking he was still that working-class kid from middle-of-nowhere-England pretending to be just as sophisticated as everyone else. To this day, he says, those feelings can creep in on him. "I'm proud of where I'm from, but there is just such a huge gap from where I was to where I am", says McCartney. That fact makes it all the more important, he adds, to show his teams that they can be their authentic selves. "I want our people of all backgrounds to feel comfortable here", he says, adding, "it's hard to be creative if you're trying to be someone else at the same time".McCartney credits some of this managerial approach to Vincent Coates, a senior director, footwear product development lead, for football, who taught him that a great leader provides an environment for people to feel empowered. And Coates confirms that McCartney's earned that: "I'd walk through a brick wall for Phil", he says, calling him a leader who is as much at home leading an off-site to discuss footwear as he is bringing the levity to diffuse the day-to-day pressure—like when he donned an Elvis outfit and sang Suspicious Minds to lighten the team mood (that story is fact-checked and confirmed). Coates says the company's return to being a player in the football market came from strategies like McCartney's insistence on bringing siloed teams together. Before he took the role, Innovation sat separately from the Product and Marketing teams. Now, they're all connected and pulling towards the same focused goals. "Phil's created a greater team and this culture of belonging, inclusivity and fun", says Coates. "Yes, we have challenges. But now, because we're figuring things out together, it's an enjoyable journey. That's the impact he has on people—he makes you want to be all in".

Since childhood, sport has taken McCartney on some of the pivotal journeys of his life. Races gave him his first taste of exploring different parts of his home country and mixing with different people. With sport, "the world gets bigger and bigger", he says. And because of his long-held dedication to running, he brings a particular empathy to his work and the plight of the athlete. He knows what it's like to push yourself beyond what you think you could possibly do, to compete against yourself, to wake up at 5am for a run, because that's what he's trained his mind and body to do. It's a viewpoint he cherishes in his job, and one that athletes cherish within him. McCartney and legendary marathoner and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/eliud-kipchoge-radical-airflow-new-york-city-marathon" target="_blank">Nike athlete Eliud Kipchoge</a> have been friends for more than a decade, and the record-breaking runner says that he and McCartney talk about everything: innovation, trail shoes, blisters, their families, the future of the company. Kipchoge loves that they can do that while on a run. "It feels great for me to talk to someone who was an athlete himself, who is working with Nike and&nbsp;is among the decision-makers", says Kipchoge.Listening to athletes is not only one of the most inspiring and motivating parts of the job, McCartney says, but a key to making it all work. "The biggest thing in innovation is to take a chance with the athletes and whatever ideas they might have", he says, citing <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/six-reasons-why-breaking2-goes-beyond-26-2-miles" target="_blank">Breaking2</a>, the 2017 project that ultimately helped Kipchoge <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/10-greatest-nike-air-sports-moments" target="_blank">complete a marathon in under two hours</a>. "It leads to huge advancements in sport, human potential and technology, and we need those moments just to think differently and bigger".

Like Nike athletes, McCartney wants his team to be bold in their approach to innovation and creativity. He knows, though, that it all starts with him as a leader: "I'm always balancing care with competitiveness", he says. "We've got to win. So how do you create the conditions to do that?" His role isn't just to execute or delegate; he also wants to create the right conditions for people to do their best work. "We don't need people to be told what to do; we have loads of incredibly talented people", he says. "What they need is direction, trust and the air cover to go after something big".While McCartney may still be a bit incredulous about leaving Newcastle, when he visits home, he likes to talk to the local kids about his journey: that you can go from being a young runner propelled by the potential in your soles to the executive who guides their production. And not only the sport science that helped create them, but the look, the feeling and the heat&nbsp;that make a new generation of kids wear those shoes to bed at night.That's the standard the company's embracing again under McCartney's guidance—in the lab, in athlete conversations, in the prototype, in the edit, in the final product. Nothing less than epic sh*t.

*If you have a body, you are an athlete.

Chief Innovation, Design and Product Officer Phil McCartney knows what the bar is when it comes to innovation at the Swoosh. This is how he's making sure the company's products clear it.

Nike Leadership

What Creating Epic Means Inside Nike Now

For kids around the world, going pro in a sport is the ultimate dream. But seeing is believing, and for indigenous youth in particular, there are fewer professional athletes to look up to. But Madison Hammond—who is a member of the San Felipe Pueblo (Katishtya) and Navajo (Diné) tribe, Black and a defensive midfielder for the Utah Royals—had a role model. Her uncle, Notah Begay III, was a professional golfer on the PGA Tour who started the NB3 Foundation, one of the non-profits that Nike and the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/mission/initiatives/n7-fund" target="_blank">N7 Fund</a> have supported, when she was a child. "At the time, I didn't fully understand how close I was to excellence", Madison, the first Native American athlete in the NWSL, says. "I think in Indigenous communities, excellence isn't always the first attribute that's given to us, but it was ingrained in me from a really young age".&nbsp;&nbsp;Growing up in New Mexico, Madison started playing football when she was 5. At the age of 9, she moved with her mother to Arlington, Virginia, and was catapulted into the highly competitive world of youth football. There, her coaches told her that if she put in the work, she had the potential to be as good as she wanted to be—and it became her mantra.&nbsp;Returning to San Felipe Pueblo during summer holidays, Madison attended an NB3 Foundation-sponsored summer camp, where she played football all day on a turf pitch provided by the foundation. She could see the reservation's sacred hills from the bright green pitch, a stark contrast to the surrounding brown landscape. By playing on a team with other Native American girls, Madison was able to immerse herself both in her culture and her sport. It was empowering.&nbsp;&nbsp;Here, in her own words, Madison tells us about chance, circumstance, her road to success and the legacy she hopes to leave other young Indigenous athletes.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The Record: when did you realise you had a real talent for football?Madison Hammond: I was around 10 or 11 years old when that feeling first kicked in. I knew that I didn't just want to be good, I wanted to be great.TR: you've talked about your uncle as your role model. How has he inspired you?MH: my uncle was a professional golfer and a Nike athlete. I think he's inspired me in two different ways. One, the fact that he was the first Native American in his sport as well. He also established the NB3 Foundation, which has been around my whole life. I played on a team that was through his foundation, and my other uncle was my coach. Being able to do that on our reservation with other girls that were from San Felipe Pueblo was really impactful for me. That's just not what I have been able to do throughout my whole football journey. I've typically been one of the only Black/Brown girls on the team. I didn't realise how impactful it would be for me 20 years later.TR: when did you know that you wanted to play professionally?MH: I didn't go into university football with the intention of playing professionally. I went into it wanting to be the best I could be. That has been my mindset my entire life: as long as I am improving, as long as I'm getting better, nothing will stop me.TR: have there been any major hurdles along the way?MH: I went to a university that was primarily white and very affluent, and I felt like I was out of my depth. It was the first time that I had to challenge myself to remember who I was and to remember what my values were and why they made me successful as a footballer. Everything comes back to my traditional beliefs.

Madison at four years old playing football on the Young Dragons team in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Madison at five, photographed with her aunt during a traditional celebration in San Felipe Pueblo.

Madison in primary school playing football for Prince William Soccer club in Woodbridge, Virginia.

TR: what was the transition like from playing at university to playing professionally?MH: in university, I played every game, I rarely came off the pitch, I played 90 minutes and out, I was captain my junior and senior year, I was named second-team All-ACC—everything was hard, but it was also easy. Everyone tells you you're the best, everyone tells you all these amazing things about yourself. And then you get to the pro level and you're a rookie, and literally you are back to the bottom after over a decade of playing football. They don't teach you the coping mechanisms for that.TR: how did you deal with that?MH:&nbsp;I think because of who I am and the family that raised me, I never really addressed when things were difficult. Being able to validate an experience, like, "It's OK to be upset, it's OK to not always be perfect, it's OK to not always achieve that excellence that you are pursuing every single day". I was so used to "rub some dirt in it, get over it, if you're having a bad day just push it down". Pushing all of that down for my whole life came up in these crazy ways my first few years as a pro, where you're suddenly doubting yourself and your confidence is dampened because you are not playing a game. I realised that I put too much value in just being on the pitch and put not enough value in the fact that I'd made it to this level.TR: when you reflect on your journey, what has changed? What have you learned since you started playing professionally?MH: I can see how easily doubt and hesitation can derail a career. This is my seventh year as a professional footballer. Personally, I don't think I ever gave myself enough credit for being a good footballer until I was older and was able to look back. In the moment, you feel like you are executing the mission every single day. You come in, you train hard, you play hard. But I don't think I gave myself the credit I'd earned. One thing I want to get better at is celebrating my journey.

Madison and TJ Kahoalii, a footballer who is Tolowa Dee-Ni' Nation and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) are the faces of Nike's summer '26 N7 Collection.

TR: what does this <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.nike.com/n7-native-american-indigenous-heritage" target="_blank">N7 Collection</a> represent to you? How does it feel to now have a role in bringing it to life?MH: to me, N7 represents opportunities for education and conversation and shows how incredible all these different communities and tribes are. I think that this collection shows that we can be a part of the mainstream culture. It is a dope example of Indigenous design influences, and it's come together into something that feels really authentic. There's a design motif that mimics a modern pueblo; the colours represent the mountainous terrain, clay and water. All of these things bring so much meaning to me, my family and my people.&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-s-new-n7-collection-celebrates-indigenous-communities-on-and-off-the-pitch" target="_blank">It feels like such an honour to have this N7 Collection come to life</a> and have it centred around football and indigenous people from the Southwest—and to be the face of it. It is a unique blend of everything I am.TR: what is your goal as a representative of your community?MH: as a woman of colour, one of my foundational pillars is to be an active participant in the communities that I occupy. I think having that consistency in my traditions and beliefs has given me the confidence to live bravely in the sports world. It can be a lonely place, and by using the innate experiences that I have access to as an indigenous and Black woman, I can approach every team I'm on with the same perspective and desire to be an active participant and the best teammate that I can be.TR: how would you like to inspire the next generation of Native American athletes?MH: I think the best way I could inspire the next generation of Native athletes is to continue striving for on-pitch excellence and remember to give back to where I came from. Now there are native athletes doing amazing things; there's Janee' Kassanavoid and SilentRain Espinoza. It makes me feel really positive to know that I'm not alone in carrying that message of visibility and opportunity. It's a reminder that when you give pathways to people in my community, we will deliver.TR: what kind of legacy do you want to leave?MH: I hope to be a reminder to young people that if you come from a small town, it's OK. If you come from a small community, it's OK. You can still make it to this level.

"When you give pathways to people in my community, we will deliver", says the Utah Royals defensive midfielder.

How I got here

On the Road to Excellence, Madison Hammond Is Celebrating the Journey

Shoemakers. Cobblers. Stitchers. Pattern engineers. These are only a handful of the specialists inside Italy's Montebelluna and Diamant workspaces, where Nike partners with teams that guide a single football boot through 35 individual manufacturing steps. In about three hours, the shoe moves from pre-assembly to shaping and stitching to final build.This work represents the final stretch of a much longer journey—nearly two years of development, testing and refinement—to deliver Nike's pinnacle football boot, the Mercurial.Nike came to the region in 1996, drawn to a place long regarded as the best in the world for boot manufacturing. For three decades, Nike has relied on the expertise here to provide old-world Italian craftsmanship to complement its advanced footwear innovations, using hands as often as machines.Inside the Montebelluna sample room lives a one-of-a-kind collection of roughly 300 pairs of foot lasts. These custom forms honour more than 200 players who've shaped Nike Football, from Cristiano Ronaldo to Kylian Mbappé to Sophia Wilson. And while Montebelluna perfects the boot for Nike's most elite athletes, the process starts in the Diamant factory, where this year's Mercurial Vapor 17 and Mercurial Superfly 11 are made for footballers around the world.Every iteration of the Mercurial builds on what came before, raising the bar for speed, performance and confidence on the pitch. For the artisans who meticulously engineer these boots, the reward goes beyond turning a "prototype into a masterpiece", as one bootmaker put it. It's the pride and responsibility of knowing their work will be worn by football's elite athletes on the world's biggest stage.Here, go inside the Italian workspaces where the Mercurial comes to life.

Shoemakers. Cobblers. Stitchers. Pattern engineers. They all partner with Nike in these unique facilities to perfect football boots—like the new Merc—for the game's most elite as well as everyday footballers around the world.

One Year In, Toma Shows That Youth-Led Street Football Is the Future of the Game

The Young Footballers Behind England's X2 Collection

How Steve Prefontaine set the pace for Nike

Dylan Scott on the Slow, Steady Work of Becoming a Hyrox Champion

The Four Years That Launched Nike Football

In Her Return to the Court, Serena Williams Reminds Us Why She's the GOAT

What Creating Epic Means Inside Nike Now

On the Road to Excellence, Madison Hammond Is Celebrating the Journey

Inside the Italian Workspaces Where We Craft the Nike Mercurial Boot

The Definitive History of Nike's World Campus

Amy Montagne: The Force Returning Nike to Sport

Martin Lotti is Driving a New Wave of Creativity at Nike