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

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

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

Sofieke van Bilsen

Photo essay

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

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

2005–2009

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

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

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

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

2011–2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

2016–2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Nike—stories from inside NIKE, Inc.

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.

Running

5 Questions With Nike Running's Coach Bennett

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.

Training

For the win

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

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.

Feature

What Creating Epic Means Inside Nike Now

On an early Wednesday morning in February, Amy Montagne stands in front of a small production team in the Serena Williams Building on Philip H. Knight Campus in Beaverton, Oregon. The president of Nike has a presence—commanding, assured and dressed in hues of black; she stands on a makeshift stage while the crew adjusts the lights. Whether or not the camera's recording, Montagne is on—personable, assertive and ready to go—despite waking up well before sunrise. She says the energy and passion it takes to do that day after day, week after week, comes from the shared dedication of the teammates surrounding her during her more than two decades with the company: "Bringing my A-game is critical to my role, because I want to rise to the level of the people around me".Montagne is filming a message for the global Nike team meeting in Milan, a thank you to the tens of thousands of worldwide employees for the hard work leading up to the winter's major sporting moments—the Super Bowl, All-Star Weekend, the Winter Olympics—and a rallying cry for the hard work everyone knows is still ahead. After her first read-through under the lights, a make-up artist dabs her face with a sponge while she listens to feedback. Her delivery (only two takes!) earns applause, and she laughs. "This is not a normal day", she promises.But when a day in the life of the president of the world's largest sports brand can encompass anything from lunching with premier athletes to leading meetings on global sport brand strategy to snapping a pic with Kim Kardashian for her Instagram grid during the NikeSKIMS launch in New York (this one jackpotted Montagne cool points with her triplet teenage sons), maybe the normalcy is found in accepting that every day will be different. And that's exactly what she loves about it: "Each day, you get new information: people loved a certain product drop, a new sport campaign resonated with a specific community, an athlete's authentic style led to a whole-new way of dressing to compete—the energy of that immediate response from people who love Nike is what inspires me", she says. The question that she has asked herself to guide each unique day, over her two decades at the company, remains the same: "How do we lead our teammates and this brand to greatness?"

When Elliott Hill accepted the NIKE, Inc. president & CEO position in 2024, bringing the company back to its sport roots and focusing on the athlete was at the top of his to-do list. Nike needed a turnaround. After years of dominance, the brand was no longer the untouchable giant in the sports industry, and upstart brands were clawing away at the Swoosh market share. Nike's once-clear mandate to be steeped in sport, by listening and serving the athlete, had turned murky. Finding a visionary leader to drive a vigorous reestablishment of the brand's credo was key, and the path to that had to be through strengthening the relationship with athletes (and that means Nike's definition of "athletes"—anyone who has a body).Hill needed a trusted leader for the Nike brand who could lead its new Sport Offense, a plan that rebuilt the company and its priorities through sport, allowing teams to go deep on what those specific athletes need. This right-hand leader would not only need a mind for end-to-end strategy, a commitment to innovation and an adroitness for emotional storytelling, but also be someone who could use those skills to make deliberate choices to strengthen the business for the long term, activating Nike's many levers to connect with athletes, sport communities and fans across the world. Hill had a clear choice: Amy Montagne.Over her 12 roles and 21 years at the company, Montagne had established herself as a healthy balance of left and right brain—an outside-the-box thinker who also uses "spreadsheet" as a verb—and was a motivating force behind Nike's new sport-first operating model. "She always asks, 'how is this connected back to sport, back to the athletes?'" Hill says, outlining her strategic filter. That comes from her unwavering dedication to the benefits of sport that go beyond playing: in high school, for example, Montagne tried out for the basketball team but didn't make the cut. Instead of walking away, she doubled down and became the team's statistician, a role that encapsulated her talent, her secret sauce: she can see the whole court, identify people's unique abilities and skill sets and use that data to help make the whole team better.

Montagne is a straight shooter, with the sort of no-filler management style that makes it clear what she's thinking. If she works with you, she believes in you. And she's the first to admit that she expects big things. But she knows that success is only achieved by pushing past what you think are your limits, and as a team. Charles Williams, global vice president of Footwear, wasn't remotely surprised when Montagne became the president of the Nike brand. For years, he'd known her as a "courageous, empowering" leader, one who was just as likely to come and meet Williams in his office as he was in hers. It's a small gesture with a big ripple effect. Not only does it show respect for his time, Williams says, but it's an opportunity for more junior employees to get a bit of face time with her. Hill likens her to a coach and notes how many relationships she's fostered during her time at Nike. "Because of Amy's level of clarity and accountability, she builds trust with the team, and then you get the followership", he says.Once, Montagne received feedback from her team that, while she has extremely high expectations, they knew that she has those same high bars for herself, above all. "It was one of those moments where I felt really seen for who I am", she says. And that approach has resulted in a genuine loyalty between Montagne and her teams—she gives people the tools, guidance and space to be great, and in return, they are.&nbsp;

Nike's winning history is never far from Montagne's mind: it excites her that everyone around her knows they have big, and well-made, shoes to fill. "Every product, every story we tell, every marketplace execution has to be done with uncompromising excellence", she says. How does she make that happen? By asking honest questions: is the product living up to our expectations, what we know this company is capable of? Is that the best way to tell the story? Is the execution the most premium, sustainable way we can do it? Did we give it absolutely everything?If that philosophy sounds almost unbelievably driven, well, that's on purpose. And it's what makes her ideal for the job. "Amy's the leader Nike needs right now", says Hill, "and I believe the structure we have in place, the team she's put in place, the expectation that she set, is going to give us that sharp clarity against the different consumers we're serving, and that will unlock another wave of growth".

Only recently has Montagne allowed herself—her full self—to be seen in the workplace. Early on in her career, working at the corporate headquarters for The Gap, in San Francisco, she was known for leaving her personal life at the door. Work was work, home was home, and never the two shall meet. "She has a strength to compartmentalise things to be able to move through adversity", says Janet Hayes, her former coworker, long-time friend and current CEO of Crate & Barrel. But that also meant that people had a harder time getting to know her. "I'm watching her now, in the last couple of years, become a different kind of leader who is braver and a little more vulnerable, and I think that's an evolution of her leadership that's going to take her far", Hayes says.&nbsp;For Montagne, the shared trauma of the pandemic illuminated a new managerial approach. For the first time in her career, everyone she knew was going through the same struggle. There was no reason to pretend it wasn't happening, so why not face it head on? The comfort that came with that allowed her to bring more of her personal life into the workplace. Not as a proselytiser, but as a person. "I am who I am because of the life experiences I've had", she says. Having kids later in life, going through a difficult IVF journey, having triplets when she thought she was having a single child and being all too familiar with grief and family loss—these&nbsp;are truths as integral to understanding Montagne as her management style or work habits. "We all have these things, and you find the right ways to bring your personal and professional lives together", she says, "to be your true, authentic self and to support people to be theirs".Seeing a leader like Montagne be vulnerable and sincere in the workplace has allowed others to do the same. "She's a real one", says Williams. "You need that in this organisation, because it shows people they can be themselves".

Montagne's true self at Nike is pure energy; she has a palpable enthusiasm for the job, a humming aura around her. Her role today is a culmination of a steady focus throughout her career, starting from what drove her when she was working in retail in high school in Arizona—a curiosity about the consumer. Even then, she was fascinated by buying habits: what do people like? Why do they buy the things they do? How do fit, colour and style make a difference? That desire for understanding makes just as much sense for Montagne now as it did back then. "In a big company, driving billions of dollars of revenue, everything gets clear when you come back to a consumer and their insights", she says. "Nike can seem so big, but in the end, we're shop owners".&nbsp;As an undergrad at Santa Clara University, she enrolled in the retail management institute, where that curiosity became a tenable career path: this was an actual job, being a buyer for a store. "And that was it!" she says. Her path unfurled before her, like a finger before it beckons. She graduated with a degree in communications, sharpening the storytelling skills that now drive Nike's most simple and powerful message: that sport can change the world. That's a fact Montagne's seen time and time again, be it watching her kids commit to and improve at a new skill, or being part of grand moments, like the Super Bowl or World Cup. "In a world today that has so much challenge and change, sport is the unifier that really brings people together", Montagne says.

After graduation, she completed buyer training at Walmart headquarters and took a role as an allocation analyst at Gap Inc., capping off 11-hour days by running across the Golden Gate Bridge, training for marathons with friends. Her sport of choice has changed—now, you're more likely to find her in a Pilates studio or a cycling class—but her tenacity and strive for excellence is the same. Her husband, Pete, formerly a category manager at Nike, calls her the hardest worker he's ever met. (Their pairing was a matter of fate; although they attended the same college, they didn't meet until after graduating, when Pete was working at Nike and Amy had just started.) More than anything, Pete says, Amy is smart, sharp and prepared. That hasn't always come easily, though; she's had her fair share of shoot-down remarks, plenty of times where she's been the only woman in the room, he says. "What she does that sets her apart is create a culture of inclusivity—she cares about her team, about mentorship, about elevating people's careers".

Her passion and commitment to championing women is well represented in her office, on the 5th floor of the Sebastian Coe Building, where an oversized copy of the company's 1996 print ad "If You Let Me Play" sits on her desk. Working with top athletes, like A'ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark and JuJu Watkins, is one of the most fulfilling parts of her job, which includes "doing everything I can to show them support—that we want to learn, listen and meet them where they are, and keep doing that as they succeed", she says. The bar isn't what the world expects Nike to do. "It's giving so much more than that", she says, "what we know our athletes deserve".When Montagne took over her current role in May 2025, she and her team went on a retreat to hammer out a clear vision for the Nike brand. The company will always be about sport, they contended—but the evolution had to come from following the lead of the Nike athlete. "They don't compete just to be like anybody else", she says. "They say: 'I can do it better, faster, stronger, more stylish'. They break things to be better—and that's what we're meant to do, too".

For Montagne, that means taking her vision of the Nike Sport Offense—establishing more than a dozen specific sport focuses and creating the teams that power them—and nurturing those sport cultures, from running and football and basketball, to golf, tennis, training and more. Each of these has its own personality, energy and nuances, and essential for Nike, its own aesthetic. For example, the look of running, Montagne says, is style, for everyday and professional athletes alike. She points to Sha'Carri Richardson, who doesn't run fast and break records in spite of her long nails or false lashes—she does so because of them, how they allow her to be her authentic self. Show up as the most real version of you, Montagne says, and you perform at your best. That's a tenet that stretches across sports. "Look at the relaunch of the ACG brand at the Winter Games", she points out. "The brand has legitimate outdoor legacy and innovation, and products that speak to an epic, unique style".As our interview ends, Montagne is in her 5th-floor office, seated at her desk and turning to the next events of the day—meetings, presentations, preparations. You can see her mind whirring, just like that high-school statistician. The court is bigger, but her diligence has remained the same: she's surveying, watching her teams' plays and noting what must happen next to make everyone, and the brand, better. The through line, to be sure, will be sport. To know where Nike is going next, look to where the energy is in the world behind sports, behind athletes. Wherever you find that, you’ll find Nike, supporting, listening, learning—and fiercely competing like no other.

With more than 20 years of experience over 12 roles, the brand president is guiding Nike's new Sport Offense, taking the company back to its athlete-first roots and strengthening the business for the long term.

Amy Montagne: The Force Returning Nike to Sport

By the time Alysa Liu reaches the end of her four-minute free skate, the energy inside the Milano Ice Skating Arena is unmistakable. With the final notes of Donna Summer's MacArthur Park Suite echoing through the building, Alysa joyfully finishes her programme, tossing a playful hair flip towards the camera. The crowd erupts. Seven triple jumps. Zero mistakes. The 20-year-old Team USA figure skater, clad in a shimmering gold dress, has just delivered the performance of her life. Moments later, the scores confirm it: Alysa has won Olympic gold, becoming the first US woman in nearly a quarter of a century to claim the sport's biggest prize.For Alysa, the Milano Cortina victory is the culmination of one of figure skating's most unexpected journeys. The youngest US national champion at 13, she walked away from the sport as a teenager, drained by the pressures of elite competition. Yet nearly two years later, she returned with a different perspective: if she was going to skate again, it would be on her terms. Because she loved it. And if she won, it would be as herself—not as someone else's version of what a champion should be.That mindset has helped turn Alysa into one of the sport's most intriguing athletes, someone who is redefining what winning can look like. Below, in her own words, she shares how she thinks about pressure, success and learning to trust her own path.

Success can mean a lot of different things to different people. For me, it's about being with the people I love, making memories with them and spending time together. It's about having new experiences and just living. The mantra I keep coming back to is YOLO. It's cliché—but you really only live once. So you have to make the most of it for yourself.These days, I say no to more things that I used to say yes to. I like to hear people out and I like to try new things, but I trust my instincts. When I came back to figure skating, people said I would have to change my hair, and I said, "No, I won't be changing my hair". People give me song suggestions, and I'll take them into consideration, but if I don't like something, I'm not going to skate to it. I want to make choices that feel like me.My advice for kids or anyone feeling a lot of pressure is to stop and ask who or where it's actually coming from. It's easy to feel like there are so many expectations on you, but when you really think about it, who's the one putting that pressure on you? It's usually not that many people. For me, journalling and identifying where that feeling is originating from really helps. Sometimes when you narrow it down, you realise it's coming from one specific person, or maybe no one at all.

It's important to surround yourself with the right people. You've got to have people around you who have your best interests in mind. People you care about and that care about you. I've been fortunate to build a team that really knows what I want. They give me the space to make my own choices. I get the final say for everything—my programmes, my music, the dress, the hair, the make-up. They respect my artistic choices, and that makes a huge difference.&nbsp;Sometimes you can forget why you started in the first place. If something is feeling too hard mentally or physically, take a break and try other things. Step away, reassess and see if it pulls you back in. If it does, great. And if it doesn't, then maybe you're being pulled toward something completely new.At the end of my programmes, I always try to do something for the cameras. The camera is right there on your face when you finish skating, so you've got to do something. A hair flip is just what I go to. We don't have much screen time when we're out there, so you have to make the most of it.

When it comes to training, I'm pretty self-disciplined. I like to train, actually. That's my favourite part about being an athlete. I really romanticise it now. No one has to tell me when to stop. I know myself really well, so I know what my limit is. And that comes from a lot of trial and error.My favourite way to reset is just turning my phone off. Usually my phone is what overwhelms me the most. So when I feel like that, I turn it off and spend time with my friends and family.At the end of the day, if it's not a "hell yes", it's a "hell no". When it comes to activities or opportunities, that's how I think about it now. I still say yes to a lot of things, but I'm more intentional about it. I don't really have regrets. You live and you learn. A big part of getting to that was learning to stop shutting down my own feelings and needs and no longer putting certain people on a pedestal.To feel free again, I had to unlearn routine. I was kind of stuck in the same day over and over again. But if you want a different life, you have to make different choices. I had to switch my inputs to have a different output.

The gold medal–winning figure skater—and sport icon for authenticity—reflects on pressure, success and learning to trust her own path.

Alysa Liu Is Winning on Her Own Terms

There is a moment Martin Lotti still sees clearly in his mind. He was 16 years old, a Swiss exchange student standing in the original Niketown in Portland, Oregon —a kid from Fribourg, a town of fewer than 40,000 people, who had arrived in the Pacific Northwest for what was supposed to be two weeks and became a year. He left Niketown holding a pair of Air Max 180s and a Michael Jordan Wings poster, the one that reads:&nbsp;"No bird soars too high if it soars with its own wings".&nbsp;His host family snapped a photo of him outside the store, mid-Jumpman pose, arms wide, grinning.That photograph would travel with him across two decades of craft, curiosity and creative ambition. And one day, while serving as chief design officer for the Jordan Brand, Lotti stood in front of Michael Jordan himself and showed him the image."This is why I fell in love with the brand as a 16 year old",&nbsp;he says, sitting at the Philip H. Knight Campus on a cool February morning, dressed in an immaculate all-white fit that reflects an understated confidence.&nbsp;"To have the person from the poster over your bed actually standing in front of you—that was surreal. One of those moments where you think: how did I get here?"

Getting to Nike was never a straight line—and that, Lotti will tell you, is exactly the point. After finishing secondary school in Switzerland, he enrolled at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. A woman in his visual communications class mentioned she'd interned at Nike, which piqued his curiosity. He sent in an application, Nike sent back a job offer. He would later marry that classmate, Linda Mai-Lotti, a detail he shares with a quiet smile that suggests he still can't quite believe his own story.What Nike represented to Lotti, and still does, was something he didn't have a word for growing up in Europe.&nbsp;"In Switzerland, it's more step by step,"&nbsp;he says.&nbsp;"The leash gets longer one step at a time. Whereas in the US, the opportunity is just … there for the taking. It doesn't matter how old you are or where you're from. If you can bring it, you get the chance to design it".That belief—that potential has no ceiling—became the foundation of how Lotti designs, leads and sees the world.

Today, Lotti serves as Nike's chief design officer, representing the Swoosh in major cultural moments such as Milan Design Week, and overseeing product and concept design across the company—an enormous responsibility he approaches with the same grounded clarity that has defined his career. A good designer is a good listener first, he says, because creation is so reliant on input, from the athletes, of data sets, for how to support the product with the right storytelling. The why of your creation—who you're creating for and what problem you're solving—is what delineates a designer from an artist. "Design is not just executing or sketching; we are problem solvers", Lotti says. "<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/bill-bowerman-nike-s-original-innovator" target="null">Bill Bowerman</a> baked this into the DNA of the company: you create for a reason, not just because you can". He also points out that this is no simple task. "Creativity is often romanticised. It's painful! I think it's like a marathon. It takes time, you have to lean in, and in the end you're exhausted and elated".The drive to continue that process runs deep within Lotti. There is a phrase he returns to again and again, a quiet north star beneath everything he creates:&nbsp;making people fly.&nbsp;He didn't fully understand its weight until his team began working with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and he watched critically ill children choose, as their wish, to spend time with Jordan Brand designers."Not everyone can be Michael Jordan, but everyone can make someone feel something", he says, his voice measured, the words deliberate.&nbsp;"After something like that, you don't come in the next day and just make another shoe".He invokes Steve Jobs' idea of leaving a dent in the universe—of finding your platform and using it with intention.&nbsp;"We have this reach, and I don't take it for granted",&nbsp;he says.&nbsp;"It's not just an opportunity. It's an obligation to make an impact". That impact is felt within Nike too. "There's no one who pushes me more than Martin", says <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/company/people/nicole-graham" target="_blank">Nicole Graham</a>, EVP and chief marketing officer. "He's so good that it makes you want to be better; he'll come up with a great idea, which will make you want to come up with a great idea". That mindset, says Graham, comes from the way Lotti looks at the world. "He can walk down the street and see 18 different things that could be interesting for a project that we're working on—colour, material, font, topography. He lives and breathes creativity and design".

Lotti's design philosophy goes beyond aesthetics or function. He wants his teams to truly understand athletes—not just what they need from a product, but what drives them, what they carry onto the field, what makes them feel seen and inspired.In 2014, a Brazilian footballer described his&nbsp;why&nbsp;to Lotti's team:&nbsp;"We play for the love of the game and for the love of Brazil",&nbsp;the player said, grabbing his shirt as he spoke. The gesture unlocked something. The shirt wasn't just a piece of clothing; it was a symbol of pride, an encapsulation of purpose.That year, the team printed in Portuguese&nbsp;"nascido para jogar futebol"—born&nbsp;to play football—on the inside of the shirt. So that every time a player placed his hand over his heart during the national anthem, he'd feel the purpose beneath it."You aren't just listening to what athletes say about what they need",&nbsp;Lotti says.&nbsp;"You want to hear the person. You want to understand what makes them tick".Sometimes, Lotti and his team's inspiration is more abstract. It surfaces in the raked gravel of a Zen garden in Kyoto, Japan, which became the outsole geometry of the Nike Kyoto, the brand's first yoga-inspired shoe, its upper a subtle nod to the kimono's wrap. Or it can live in the stark, earthy palette of Iceland, which shaped an autumn and holiday training collection.This is one of the quiet gifts of being based in Portland, he says. You're required to go out, seek, learn. "We're more global citizens, which I love, because so many doors open up when you go to new places".

His wife Linda describes Lotti as an athlete—not just literally (he competed and taught snowboarding), but in the way he approaches his craft. When their professor in school assigned 10 sketches, Martin did 20. Not because he had to, but because the work was alive to him, and the push to keep refining it would never rest. Curiosity, for Lotti, isn't something you switch off.That energy surfaces everywhere. A recent trip to a car dealership ended with a salesperson offering him a job, only half-jokingly. He'd arrived knowing more about every model and option than the staff.&nbsp;"He's able to stay focused and keep working until he ploughs through it and finds the solution",&nbsp;Linda says.&nbsp;"Like an elite athlete with a relentless drive to grow and perfect. Just in a very different arena".We're sitting in the Energy Product Design space in the Mia Hamm building, and Lotti is flipping through the pages of the Nike Design Annual, a thick-stock magazine containing a sweeping overview of the best that the Nike brand has done in the past year, through a range of sport, athlete and product moments. "We're so focused on the future, being able to look back is almost cathartic, and it allows us to set a benchmark: if you want to be in this book, it has to be a certain level", Lotti says. "It's a way to celebrate the team".The team Lotti's gathered, says Graham, is unmatched. "One of Martin's most meaningful contributions to Nike is the creative community he's nurtured", she says. "When you're on Martin Lotti's team, you feel like you're one of the most creative people in the world—and that's exactly what he wants you to feel, how he's empowered people to feel". You see the impact of that in this year's Nike Design Annual, which includes 25 of the most innovative pieces the company produced in 2025. Many are feats of the unexpected, breaking the mould—like the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/what-is-nike-radical-airflow" target="null">Nike Radical AirFlow</a> long-sleeve for ultra-marathons. People were sceptical at first of the long-sleeve shirt meant to cool you down, says Lotti, with some even affectionately dubbing it the "Christmas sweater". Lotti laughs about it even now. "Believing is wearing it", he says, "it's like air conditioning for your body. You pump your arms while you run, and the material creates little cyclones of airflow. That's its geometry—it's naturally cooling".

Throughout our conversation, Lotti emphasised the uniqueness of working on design at a company like Nike: the cutting-edge technology, like the nascent ability to create prototypes from 3D printers or virtual mock-ups; the eye toward sustainability, shown in&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-aero-fit-official-images" target="null">the new base material, Aero-FIT</a>, for&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/collections/nike-football-unveils-2026-federation-kits-featuring-aero-fit-performance-cooling-technology" target="null">all football shirts</a> that are more breathable for athletes&nbsp;and&nbsp;have a lower environmental impact to create; the&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/meet-the-nike-mind-team" target="null">Mind Science team</a>, which focuses on improving athlete experience from the neck up.This depth and range creates the perfect balance of humanness, enterprise and technology that Lotti seeks. That even the executive chairman, Mark Parker, shares Lotti's design background makes Lotti's work all the more fulfilling. "It makes our life so much easier to see design as part of the foundation of the company", he says, dancing his fingertips over the tabletop. "It's not an afterthought. It's central to everything we do".That belief extends to how Lotti thinks about risk—not as something to manage, but as something to embrace, to push Nike to new places. "Calculated risk is what athletes do every day", he says. "They don't try to replicate their fastest time or most powerful serve or heaviest weight, they want to be better. The best".Why shouldn't we all?

"Design is not just executing or sketching", says the chief design officer. "We are problem solvers".

Martin Lotti is Driving a New Wave of Creativity at Nike

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.

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

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Short Stories

Atlanta Dream guard Allisha Gray is having a banner year. The WNBA All-Star starter is posting career highs in the 2025 season in points, rebounds, assists, three-pointers made and minutes played, in which she leads the league. But even more impressive than her stats is the manner in which she makes versatility look totally natural. Name the players who have averaged 18 points, five rebounds, three assists and at least two three-pointers per game in a season. She's the only one. During the 2024 All-Star Weekend, she won both the Skills Challenge and the Three-Point Contest, a double victory she'll defend in Indianapolis starting tonight. She's already off to a hot start. On Friday morning, after her team's training, she won a half-court shot contest. As basketball's talent level rises across the board, both in the women's and the men's game, Gray is proof that you don't need to sacrifice one skillset to evolve the others. If you're going to win in this era of basketball, better competition requires a better game, in every way.We spoke with Allisha about her excellent year, where she developed her commitment to a well-rounded game and her take on her role in a stacked league.&nbsp;

The past off-season was perfect to make leaps in my game. I was really locked in to develop my one-on-one play. The Unrivaled league was ideal, because you're going head to head against some of the league's best players, so you have to be able to create your own shot. And defensively, you have no choice but to step up. Nine times out of ten, you're on an island, so you don't have any help. Your individual defence needs to be strong.My toughness was being shaped before I even played basketball. I mainly grew up with my two brothers. Playing outside in the backyard, I learned how to stand my ground against them. Every game we played was competitive, to the point where my parents would need to separate us so we wouldn't go at each other.In basketball, if you're outmatched, you need to figure out your edge. I was never going to overpower my brothers. But I could outwork them and outsmart them. When I started beating them in one-on-one and shootouts, that's when I started earning their respect.&nbsp;I view winning literally. I'm so competitive, victory means winning over someone else. Winning the Georgia state championship in high school was the moment when that was solidified for me. We went undefeated that year. It's not only that we won—we didn't lose, to anyone.&nbsp;

Growing up in a military household, you don't have any excuse for giving less than your best effort. My dad was in the army. It was "Yes, sir" and "Yes, ma'am" for as long as I could remember. He was my basketball coach until I went off to college. I'd be in a hard workout, and he'd tell me, "I'm not gonna let you fall short of your expectations in front of me". Did I mention he was my principal at school? [Laughs.] It was a tough environment, but now that I'm older, I know he had a vision for what I could accomplish.Scoring isn't everything. It's crazy to me how a lot of people focus on the points that a player puts up, and nothing else. You can impact the game in so many different ways. Why wouldn't you train to get better in every area?My go-to Nike product? That's easy. My goggles! I started wearing them after I got an eye injury during a 3x3 game. I've worn them ever since.The league is stacked. You can't take your talent for granted. You have so many elite players who are working on their craft. It makes playing in the All-Star Game so meaningful, knowing that you're mentioned in those same ranks.&nbsp;I'm not giving any ground in the Skills Comp or the Three-Point Contest this year. I'm focusing on both again this weekend—I&nbsp;won't limit myself to one or the other. I'm confident, and I'm feeling fit and ready. Then again, with how many minutes I'm playing this year, I was gonna get in shape, right?&nbsp;

The Atlanta Dream guard is having a season that epitomises a well-rounded player. That's not just a product of the talent level across the W, but of her lifelong work ethic.

Allisha Gray is levelling up her game—all of it

KARINA, a member of the South Korean pop group aespa, officially joins the Nike family this month. The small steps that have led to the group's success—consistent hard work, sacrifice and the dedication to push through obstacles—reflect the same mindset that an athlete needs to succeed, says KARINA.We spoke with the 25-year-old artist about why taekwondo has been a lifelong instructive sport, how the Air Max Muse pairs with practically everything and why partnering alongside Nike was a natural fit.

What's your defining Nike memory?&nbsp;As a child, I loved watching TV. It was where I first saw musical artists perform, and it fuelled in me a dream to become one of the stars on that stage, who were always wearing Nikes on their feet. That was when my connection with Nike began. The brand is like second nature to me now. I'll rock the Air Force 1 without thinking twice.What's your earliest memory of sport?&nbsp;Growing up, I was exposed to many sports, including ballet, swimming, futsal, basketball and taekwondo, in which I earned a black belt. As you level up while earning more belts, you grow in both athletic skill and the athlete mindset. It's in that mindset that you learn patience, you gain respect for the process and you develop a can-do spirit. Even now, with my packed schedule, those lessons from taekwondo are still with me. They're the foundation of my sport background, helping me stay focused no matter what situations I face or decisions I make.What similarities do you see in your background as an athlete and an entertainer?I believe that anyone who uses their body to move with passion and gives their best effort is an athlete. What athletes and entertainers have in common is how they pour countless hours into a defining moment, like a performance. While entertainers give their all on stage, athletes push their limits in pursuit of victory. Compared to the glorious moments of winning or performing, the hours of practice or rehearsals aren't that glamorous. Athletes and entertainers need endurance to reach their goals, but the result is so worth it in the end.&nbsp;

What's your most memorable Nike shoe or piece of apparel?&nbsp;It's not an exaggeration to say that I've grown up with the Air Force 1 and the Dunk. My favourite Nike shoe right now is the&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/air-max-muse-official-images" target="null">Nike Air Max Muse</a>&nbsp;in the silver colourway. I first tried them during a short trip around Europe after Milan Fashion Week. What I love most about them, aside from the comfort, is how it can elevate my whole outfit. I can pair it with a leather jacket and jeans. How could I not fall in love with a shoe like that?&nbsp;What are you most looking forward to in partnering with Nike?&nbsp;Nike empowers self-expression and encourages people to challenge stereotypes and forge new paths. If you're confident in your dreams, you should keep pushing forward. Hopefully my journey combined with Nike's message can inspire more people and bring positive influence to the world.

The 25-year-old artist on her black belt in taekwondo, how the Air Max Muse pairs with everything and why partnering with Nike was a natural fit.

Welcome to the family

5 questions with K-pop star KARINA

Images: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/cameron-strand-contributing-photographer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Cameron Strand</a> Two world records broken. Nike athlete <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/faith-kipyegon-profile" target="_blank">Faith Kipyegon</a>'s 1500m WR, forecast last week during her <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/topics/breaking4" target="_blank">#Breaking4 attempt</a>, and Beatrice Chebet's 5000m WR. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/pre-classic-bowerman-mile" target="_blank">New national records set</a>. Personal bests across the board. All in front of a sold-out crowd at Eugene's Hayward Field, a venue considered sacred ground in the world of athletics. The 50th anniversary of the Pre Classic was every bit worthy of the meet's namesake, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/how-steve-prefontaine-set-the-pace-for-nike" target="_blank">legendary runner Steve Prefontaine</a>, and the images below show what fans of this sport have always known: For witnessing drama, suspense, electric energy and endless passion, there is nothing better than the athlete magic of athletics.

The drama, suspense, energy and passion—if you're not yet a fan of athletics, you're about to become one.

Incredible scenes from the 50th anniversary of the Pre Classic

Words: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/davis-jones-senior-editor" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Davis Jones</a> Images: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/cameron-strand-contributing-photographer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Cameron Strand</a>To fully understand the look on Niels Laros's face after narrowly clinching this year's Bowerman Mile in Eugene, you have to go back to the ringing of the bell lap, when he still trailed the race leader, American Yared Nuguse, by more than three seconds.In front of a sold-out crowd in Eugene, Ore. at the 50th&nbsp;Pre Classic, the 20-year-old Dutch runner tapped into his own brand of Hayward magic. He separated himself from the chase pack with 400m to go. Then, at the final 200m mark, he took off for Nuguse, running an unthinkable 25.9 second split and making up an almost 8-metre gap in the home straight. The two racers lunged at the finishing line. A few seconds later, Laros saw the official time, wearing a look of disbelief: 3:45.94. He'd won the Bowerman Mile by one-one-hundredth of a second and set a new Dutch national record. His final lap—53.3—was one of the fastest fourth laps since the United Kingdom's Steve Cram broke the world record in 1985."Man, that Hayward magic is real", says Laros. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime feeling to experience a race like that".For 25 years, the Bowerman Mile has brought together the world's most talented milers, assembling pros, world champions and Olympic medallists. The event is one of four premier mile races left in the world: the Dream Mile in Oslo, the Wanamaker Mile in New York City and&nbsp;&nbsp;the Mile Invitational in Iowa. Of those, it's produced more sub-4-minute miles than any other race, counting 418 such performances to date, including this year's race in Eugene.&nbsp;Speaking of which, the 2025 race was arguably the deepest mile race in history, featuring the most men in one race under 3:50 (13), 3:49 (9) and 3:48 (8).What makes the Bowerman Mile stand apart? Fast times don't always correlate to a fast track. The latter can be an immeasurable mix of qualities tied to time, place and circumstances, leading to generational performances. But talk to anyone who's competed in the race and they'll tell you there's something different about the Bowerman Mile.&nbsp;

The competitive field

Year after year, the Bowerman Mile draws a stacked line-up, assembled of reigning world champions and record holders. Since 2000, it's taken a time of 3:51.84 or faster to win the event. The race's buy-in is all the more impressive considering that its results don't count towards points at the end of the pro circuit, even though it's classified as a Diamond League meet.A runner who always circles the date of the Bowerman Mile is Australia's Cam Myers, who finished sixth this year and set an Australian under-20 record with 3:47.50. In 2023, at just 16 years old, Myers ran as a pacemaker for Norway's Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who clocked the Bowerman Mile's fastest-ever time in 3:43.73, setting a European and Diamond League record."We all want to win this race in particular", says Myers. "It's intensely competitive, and it's the perfect environment for fast times".Whether or not a record falls at the Bowerman Mile, each year's race teases out greatness in every runner, carrying the makings of a personal best.

Grant Fisher, who holds the American record in the 2-mile distance, ran his first Bowerman Mile this year, laying down a 3:48.29. The race is a self-fulfilling prophecy, he says. When racers know they are surrounded by a fast field, they all raise their game. Plus, the Bowerman Mile is almost always rabbited, or led by a pacemaker. Runners know they'll get wrenched to their physical thresholds. Once the pacemaker drops out, there's no time to think. Just go."We all know the pacer is going to take us deep into the race", Fisher says. "When the pacer drops, the field is of such high quality that these amazing times just keep rolling".

Consider one of the Bowerman Mile's most memorable performances—when Alan Webb, then a secondary school student from Virginia, broke the national secondary school mile record set by Jim Ryun, which had stood for 37 years. The pacemaker took the first 409 metres at a searing 54.6, equivalent to a mile pace of 3:34.8.At the race's halfway mark, Webb had moved up from last place to 13th. The pace was brutal and yet, with 400m to go, Webb remembers how his body felt loose, light and capable of much, much more. He began picking runners off on the back straight. His turnover cycled with a power that outlasted men a decade older, who had competed for medals, who had set national records.&nbsp;"Sometimes, the stars align in a race, and I knew this was one of those moments", says Webb, recalling the moment. "When I got to that bell lap, I was able to find something in myself. Running the Bowerman Mile has that effect on people".

The historic location

The grandeur of the former Hayward Field, with its wooden grandstands and its Bowerman Building as the sentinel watching from the track's eastern end, is different from how a spectator would describe the view from the updated stadium—a colossal venue built for the modern age. Webb remembers while he was barrelling down the back straight in 2001 how the extreme slope of the west grandstands gave the feeling that the fans "were right on top of you". The passion and knowledge of the fans sitting in those seats rivals any location in athletics.&nbsp;

"Even before Prefontaine, Oregon had a history of domestic milers who were very, very good; people like James Bailey, Dyrol Burleson and Jim Grelle back in the Bowerman coaching days", says Pat Tyson, who ran for the University of Oregon in the early '70s, where he was roommates with Pre himself.&nbsp;&nbsp;"The mile always had a cachet among fans here, even before the Bowerman Mile officially began".

Hayward Field is a place where fans take on the role of engaged sports scientist versus passive spectator. They'll set their personal stopwatches to the smoke of the gun and scribble a runner's splits in the margins of their programme.&nbsp;Kaarin Knudson knows. She ran for UO's athletics & cross-country team from 1994 to 1999. A seven-time NCAA qualifier who won the NCAA's Woman of the Year for Oregon in her senior season, she now serves as the mayor of Eugene. Her experience as a civic leader and a former athlete gives her a uniquely personal view on what makes Eugene's passion for athletics so special.

"I have distinct memories while at UO of going on my easy runs and being stopped by community members, people I didn't know; they'd congratulate me on a race I ran the previous weekend", says Knudson. "When you're an athlete, it's motivating to be surrounded by a community who both root for you on race day and who recognise you when you're 'offstage', so to speak".Few competitors benefit from the Hayward energy quite like those who ran for UO during their college years—runners like Cole Hocker, who's run his top three fastest mile times at the Pre Classic. During his rookie season in 2022, he donned the Nike kit in front of his home crowd for the first time at the Bowerman Mile. This year, he improved his personal best to 3:47.43."Every time I get the chance to run at Hayward, I remind myself to appreciate the moment, just because of the history that has happened there before me", says Hocker.&nbsp;

The special distance

The mile and its cousin, the 1500m, are separated by a little more than 100m. Depending on who you ask, the difference in how you run the mile compared with the 1500m is marginal. Webb jokes that you're basically doing the same event, but the mile comes down to "who's willing to suffer a little longer". Others, like Laros, say the tactical game of the mile is slightly different from the 1500m. For him, the main difference comes from the start.&nbsp;"Because you're starting on the opening curve in the mile, you have less time to figure out your position before you need to tuck into the right spot", says Laros. "You basically have to get shot out of a cannon and find a good slot so you're not sorting it out on the corner and running a little extra distance".The cultural power of the mile gives it a revered place in the consciousness of running, along with the marathon. Both are niche distances in athletics, yet still count for world records.&nbsp;The wonder of the mile might come down to its clean simplicity. Four laps. Taking the laps at one minute a piece add up to four minutes, considered the standard for the elite miler. The starting line is in roughly the same place as the finish. The same fans who cheer on the field at the gun are the same who cheer at the finish.&nbsp;

One could argue that the mile distance, in fact, was the spark that lit Bill Bowerman's fascination with long-distance running performance. As a freshman at Oregon playing American football, he met Ralph Hill, the first elite miler he befriended at the university. One day, Bowerman ran 400m around the track at an all-out sprint to test his speed. The clock read 63 seconds. Bill Hayward, UO's track coach, leaned over and smirked. "Just so you know", he said, "Ralph goes that fast for four laps".

Its relative scarcity at the professional level adds to the distance's mythical status. Pro runners don't get many opportunities to compete in the mile. You might get a couple of shots at it per year, between Eugene, Oslo and New York City."You can jump into plenty of 1500m races during the year. But it's no guarantee you'll get into one of these mile races on the pro circuit", says Webb. "That's assuming you're healthy when your name gets called. If you get a chance at the mile, you better put it all on the line".That motivation fuels every competitor in the Bowerman Mile. From the young racer who's travelling to Eugene for the first time, to the seasoned pro who wants to assert their world ranking, the Bowerman Mile summons a kind of communal willpower. For Laros, participation among those four laps, holding nothing back, is a rare privilege, one that can be tough to describe. Ironically, sometimes a fast time takes a backseat to the opportunity to step onto that 1609m starting line."Winning this race meant even more to me than setting the national record", he says. "Obviously, running a fast time gives me a lot of pride, but taking the win here, at this place, was what I'm most proud of".

The Bowerman Mile at the Pre Classic has produced more sub-4:00 times than any event in the world. Here's what makes it so fast.

Inside the world's fastest mile race

Images: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/sofieke-van-bilsen-contributing-photographer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Sofieke van Bilsen</a>Wherever you were watching Faith Kipyegon take to the track to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-athlete-faith-kipyegon-breaks-mile-record-time" target="_blank">break the 4-minute mile</a>—in standing-room-only crowds of employees at Nike's worldwide campuses, at watch parties in Chicago, Los Angeles, Eldoret, Kenya, on digital billboards in New York City, London and Mexico City, or gripping the edge of your seat inside Stade Charléty in Paris—the emotions of <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/topics/breaking4" target="_blank">Breaking4</a> were palpable: excitement, nervousness, elation, pride.The images below reflect every feeling and show what athletics fans have always known: Faith Kipyegon is a champion. The team at Nike knows it too."I feel so proud of myself that I've tried", Faith said post-attempt. "Today was a learning lesson, that I have to give it my all, and that's what I did—&nbsp;I gave it my all. And it's shown me that everything is possible, and I think I've shown other women out there that can be true for them too. We have to push ourselves towards what we dream of and dare to try".Faith, we can't wait to see, and support, what you dare to try next.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Go trackside to see and feel the emotion from the champion's historic attempt.

Behind the scenes of Faith Kipyegon's Breaking4 attempt day

From the moment Faith Kipyegon broke the women's mile world record in Monaco in 2023, there was a palpable energy in the air, a sense that something bigger was beginning.&nbsp;As Nike Footwear Innovation Lead Carrie Dimoff puts it, "I'll never forget the feeling in the stadium. It was electric. Everyone was amazed but already starting to wonder: could this be the beginning of the sub-4-minute mile for women?" You could call that the start of Breaking4. But the essence of Faith Kipyegon and Nike's project is more timeless: showing all athletes* that barriers are meant to be pushed and dreams meant to be big. Says Faith, "I get motivated by thinking of what I can achieve, the boundaries I can break and how I can empower the next generation. You can't limit yourself. You have to go for that dream. I want to show women especially that anything is possible".Here, a visual chronicle of Faith and Nike's Breaking4 journey—and clear evidence of the power of daring to try. *If you have a body, you are an athlete.

A visual reflection on the shared goal—inspiring all athletes to dream big and break barriers—between the world's fastest woman miler and Nike.

The Breaking4 journey: Faith Kipyegon and Nike's unforgettable project

Words: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/davis-jones-senior-editor" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Davis Jones</a> Images: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/dan-vernon-contributing-photographer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Dan Vernon</a> and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/sofieke-van-bilsen-contributing-photographer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Sofieke van Bilsen</a> At its core, Breaking4—<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/breaking4-faith-kipyegon-vs-the-four-minute-mile" target="_blank">Faith Kipyegon's project with Nike</a> to run a sub-4-minute mile—has always been about heart and belief. That's what's powering Kipyegon, alongside <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/faith-kipyegon-breaking4-speed-kit-behind-the-design" target="_blank">cutting-edge Nike performance products</a>. But don't think for a second—certainly not the 7.65 seconds Kipyegon needs to shave off her world-record mile time—that&nbsp;Nike didn't consider hundreds of other factors to get Kipyegon across the line in a time starting with a "3".To complement and amplify Kipyegon's bespoke products—including a one-of-one Nike Fly Suit, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/nike-new-performance-material-flyweb" target="_blank">a revolutionary FlyWeb Bra</a> and a first of its kind Victory 2 Elite FK Spike—<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/meet-the-dream-team-behind-faith-kipyegon-s-breaking4-attempt" target="_blank">the Breaking4 team</a> fine-tuned the attempt's aerodynamics and efficiency. Preparation and location. Weather and, well, vibes. Each of these points contain smaller details that the Nike Innovation team scrutinised from every angle, all in an effort to nail a perfectly orchestrated approach with Kipyegon. Dive into 10 of the ways Nike offered its support.

<h3>1. Let Faith be Faith </h3>Faith Kipyegon isn't toeing the line for Breaking4 as merely an elite runner. She's built a case as one of the greatest middle-distance runners of all time. She's the current world-record holder across three distances. Her three gold medals in the 1,500 metres span almost a decade and counting. There are intangibles too. She has her training preferences perfectly tuned. She understands her own athleticism like a driver knows their racing car. Nike's role in Breaking4 wasn't to reset Kipyegon, but to add to the capabilities of an already historic runner.

<h3>2. Instil confidence</h3>In the beginning of Breaking4 strategising, the Innovation team debated the trajectory of Kipyegon's 1-mile racecourse. What if the path was a straight, like in a road race? Remove all the curves, and ensure a pacing formation could be linear instead of skewed for left turns? ﻿When the team shared this with Kipyegon, she was vocal: She'd feel more confident and comfortable running on a track, where she'd built her entire professional career on reading the eight lanes, tuning her focus to the inside rail."Whether it was a feature of the racecourse, her pacer formation or a detail in her apparel, building her confidence meant everything to us", says Amy Jones Vaterlaus, VP, Innovation, NSRL. "We listened to her intently. We watched for cues she'd give off, maybe without even realising it. Ensuring she can move freely, without distraction, is just one more way we can help build her confidence".

<h3>3. Choose the right time of year</h3>Kipyegon's professional schedule weighed heavily in choosing the month for the attempt. If she's to peak in mid September during the World Championships in Tokyo, she has to give her body the ideal window of time for training periodisation, or the scaling of her preparation to leave her feeling ready to go. The optimal timing: late June.

<h3>4. Game the weather</h3>﻿Weather conditions on race day can be the dealbreaker for achieving fast times. Heat, wind and rain can all put an additional load on an athlete. Too much heat is a thermal burden that leads to overexertion. Too much wind—and around a track, there will always be a headwind at a certain point—creates drag forces that slow runners down. Weather doesn't come on demand, of course, and the Nike team knew the ideal geographic location of the attempt would need to cross off as many criteria as possible: zero rain, less than 12km/hr wind, moderate temperatures.

<h3>5. Minimise the jet lag</h3>﻿Anyone who flies internationally can attest to the physical and mental toil from zooming through time zones, leaving you sluggish and fatigued. Your body has a circadian rhythm, an internal clock, that prompts you to wake up and go to sleep. Somewhere in the middle of that time period is the bioenergetic sweet spot, when you feel most energised, or, in Kipyegon's case, most physically capable. That made finding the right area of the world for the attempt paramount for Breaking4. Minimising a shift in time zones would help keep Kipyegon's body clock from feeling out of whack."We knew she couldn't arrive feeling drained", says Jones Vaterlaus. "Paris having a time zone of one-hour difference from Kenya was a much easier decision than, say, somewhere in the United States, where Faith's jet lag would be significant".

<h3>6. Fine-tune the details</h3>A track isn't an inert surface. It possesses levels of responsiveness that can leave a runner's legs feeling fresh, or it can be firm and dampening, diffusing the precious energy that a runner puts into the ground. Texture matters too. Its grittiness can be well-suited, or not at all, for traction as a runner digs into the turns. For Breaking4, the Nike Innovation team ordered swatches of 10 track surfaces from around the world, sampling from different stadiums, to find the composition ideal for Kipyegon's performance, which included considerations like Kipyegon's bodyweight and stride rate."Our footwear solution for Faith was built on studying the interaction between Faith's foot and the ground", says Carrie Dimoff, senior manager for innovation footwear. "Our formula had to consider the track surface she'll be running on, and the properties the surface does or doesn't carry. While we were still landing on the location, we were able to test our spike prototypes on the exact track surface so we could evaluate energy return and traction effectiveness".

<h3>7. Find the ideal stadium</h3>The team knew Kipyegon wanted to compete on a track to stay true to the historical spirit of her sport. That left Nike's Innovation team with the crucial decision of which track. A track where a runner has pre-existing history can give them the comfort they need to lay down a fast time. One of these options was in Monaco, where Kipyegon broke the mile world record in 2023. The team also considered Eugene, Ore. In 2023, Kipyegon stepped onto Hayward Field and cruised to a Diamond League title in the 1,500 metres while setting a Prefontaine Classic meet record. In the end, the team decided on Stade Charléty in Paris, where Kipyegon ran her world-record times in the 1,500 and 5,000 metres. "I absolutely think there's special energy at this track", says Kipyegon. I have beautiful memories in Paris, breaking the 5,000 world record, breaking the 1,500 world record there. And now we are going for this special one, and I think the track will bring good results".

<h3>8. Perfect a pacer strategy</h3>﻿Nike's previous moonshot attempt, Breaking2, was a grand lesson in pacing strategy and aerodynamics. Nailing the drafting formation for Breaking4 would be one of the key elements to give Kipyegon the best chance to go sub-4. To help reduce the drag on Kipyegon, the Nike team considered countless pacer configurations, experimenting with the number of runners, the balance between men and women, and the geometry of the formation itself. They also thought about whether to introduce new pacers during the attempt. The upshot? Disruptions can make the smoothness of drafting go haywire; the choice to switch in runners midway through a lap can create micro-undulations in the air frequency, disturbing Kipyegon's speed."Creating a low-air-pressure pocket for Faith requires total synchrony among all the pacers in the formation", says Kirby. "Experimenting with different formations is a lot like rearranging the pieces on a chess board. The timing needs to be right, the group positioning needs to be right, and the relationship between any single pacer to Faith needs to be right".

<h3>9. Pump up the colour</h3>Colour choice has the psychological power to motivate an athlete to reach her highest potential. Though the Nike Innovation team used little colour in the Nike Fly Suit—one reason was that doing so would affect the aerodynamic properties of the material—the suit's Nike Aeronodes are in a colour-shifting purple, a nod to Kipyegon's favourite colour. The stadium itself will be awash in purple, covering the stands, the jumbotron and the signage around the track. At literally every turn, Kipyegon will see the colour that motivates her. Beyond the race-day environment, Kipyegon's Nike Running Collection is also rooted in purple. The collection, which includes footwear and apparel, is paired with accents of red and green, representing her Kenyan heritage. And on Kipyegon's Victory Elite FK Spike, gold accents denote her gold medal victories.

<h3>10. Give her all the Nike advantages</h3>The Innovation team gave Kipyegon the full gamut of Nike tools during her training leading up to the attempt. Some are at the modern edge of athlete-recovery methodology, such as <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/hyperboot-by-nike-hyperice-official-images" target="_blank">Nike's Hyperice boots</a>, a heat and air-compression massage tool. Others, such as Nike's <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-vomero-plus-vomero-premium-official-images" target="_blank">new Vomero Premium shoe</a>, were ideal for recovery runs or long mileage. Then there were the innovations that were expedited so Kipyegon could benefit from their advantages before and during the race. Nike FlyWeb, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/nike-new-performance-material-flyweb" target="_blank">a new 3D-printed material used for </a>Kipyegon's <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/nike-new-performance-material-flyweb" target="_blank">sports bra</a>, was moved forward in its production cycle for Kipyegon to train in it. "This attempt is the first time Nike FlyWeb will be tested on the world stage, and in a one-of-one bra", says Janett Nichol, VP of Apparel Innovation. "Faith gave us a rare opportunity: she would not only wear it, she'd help us evolve it".

When she takes to the starting line, in every way, Kipyegon will represent Nike's latest and greatest.

Speed suit, sports bra, spikes, focus. Here, other essential factors Nike considered to give Faith Kipyegon the best support for Breaking4.

Innovation

10 details Nike obsessed over to support Faith Kipyegon and Breaking4

When Marquis Mills Converse founded his eponymous company in 1908 in Boston, Mass., his mission was to create an operation that functioned independent of the industry's monopolies, rooted in a community of the best rubber shoemakers. His first products were galoshes and waterproof winter boots, which meant demand for his wares dipped in warmer seasons. To keep his highly skilled craftspeople occupied year-round, Converse needed a summer offering. A canvas tennis shoe with a rubber sole debuted in 1910, but the company's true breakthrough didn't come until it saw an opportunity to apply its signature innovations to a sneaker expressly designed for a then-newfangled local sport: basketball.Invented in 1891 in nearby Springfield, Mass., basketball was growing in popularity and being adopted by regional colleges when Converse introduced its "Non-Skid" shoe in 1917, defining the design as the "All-American basket-ball shoe". It was crafted on the company's original dress shoe last with two-piece quarter for superior ankle fit and paired with a non-skid sole that employed Converse's patented diamond-tread pattern.&nbsp;

The sneaker was first marketed to the area's coaches, who provided Converse with constructive feedback, including noting that they'd prefer a darker canvas upper because the light tan hue revealed too many scuffs and dings. In response, the company created a dark brown version of the Non-Skid, featuring black trim up the eye row. The iteration was officially branded the "All Star" in 1919, kicking off a new round of basketball-specific innovations that came to characterise the silhouette as the leading performance basketball shoe of the next half-century.As for the shoe's namesake, Chuck Taylor (aka Charles Hollis Taylor), he arrived a few years later.

True to its name, the Chuck Taylor All Star was worn by basically every top basketball player pre-1965. These athletes included players competing on the world's biggest stage in 1936, when Converse equipped the US men's basketball team with white Chucks featuring red and blue stripes on their foxing tape. The custom version was such a hit that competing teams adopted it, and the colourway was permanently added to the product line. In 1939, America's first national college basketball championship featured players in Chucks. In 1962, basketball's professional single-game scoring record&nbsp;of 100&nbsp;points was made in Chucks. In 1971, Chucks debuted in team colours, allowing teams to match their kit to their shoes for the first time. Chucks was basketball, and basketball was Chucks.

A 1922–23 catalogue detailing the performance merits and evolution of the Converse All Star.

Chuck Taylor, a Converse salesman and player-coach for the Converse All Star basketball team in the early 1920s.

Chuck Taylor, the man, coaching a basketball clinic in the 1950s in Chucks.

Converse Non-Skid All Stars, circa 1923, a later version of the original design, which debuted in 1917.

A Converse athletic footwear catalogue from 1957, the year the low-top Chuck was released.

As it turns out, the performance innovations that made the Chuck a great basketball design also made it a great skateboarding shoe.

Skateboarding debuted in mid-century California as "sidewalk surfing", a pastime for when the waves were flat. The low-top Chuck, which came out in 1957, was already a favourite of these "beach boys" and perfectly adapted to the new street sport, thanks to its underfoot cushioning, grippy rubber and form-fitting canvas upper.

Over 50 years later, the Chuck retains its foundational status in skate and with its top athletes—even as the sport has moved from the street to the world's premier competitions and into its leading museums. In 2023, the Design Museum in London hosted "Skateboard",&nbsp;the exhibition arm of a multimedia project that also included <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.phaidon.com/store/design/skateboard-9781838667498/" target="null">a book</a> created in collaboration with curator Jonathan Olivares, Converse and Phaidon, chronicling the countercultural design history of skateboarding.

A 1975 "sidewalk surfer" sporting laid-back, high-performance Chucks.

Ad for the 1988 Rad Collection, which comprised one-of-a-kind high-top Chucks and T-shirts.

The 2023 "Skateboard" exhibition at the Design Museum in London cemented the Chuck's status in skate and design.

Converse CONS team rider Bryce Wettstein wears Chucks when riding competitively and casually.

"Skateboard" explores the design, materials, culture and history of skateboarding.

The Chuck's simple, no-frills style also reflects skate's democratic, live-on-your-own-terms DNA—which has taken it everywhere.

Tyler, the Creator says it well: "I'm from LA, and I grew up with skateboarders. [The Chuck Taylor] is a very staple shoe in that lifestyle". The Chuck bridged skate and music in the '90s and early noughties, but the shoe's musical roots stretch back to artists topping Billboard charts in the '50s and '60s. These global stars wore the silhouette everywhere: on stages from California to England, crossing Penny Lane, traversing the beaches of Hawthorne and strolling the streets of Haight-Ashbury.

Over the decades, the Chuck has collected a roster of musical artists that rivals a legacy record label's list and spans all genres, from punk, alternative and grunge to hip-hop, indie rock and pop. It has also cemented its place in recording studios, on album covers and at global music festivals, even infiltrating classical music halls. In 2018, when the conductor Jonathon Heyward forgot his formal shoes for an orchestra performance, he wore his red Chucks onstage, nearly upstaging the concert. "Being able to find a sense of relatability within classical music is something that I am really passionate about, and Chuck Taylors are incredible barrier breakers", explains Heyward, who is music & artistic director of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, and music director at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. "By simply wearing a pair of Chuck Taylors to my concert, I become more relatable—and people's openness becomes greater when there is that sense of relatability. The walls go down and I can take them on a journey, which is what classical music is and what a live classical music performance is about".

As a cultural bellwether of mid-century America, the Chuck couldn't ignore colour. First introduced for basketball-centric reasons, the rainbow of hues also made a statement by breaking down colour barriers on court and off, celebrating diversity and championing self-expression in all forums.

From primary tones came endless prints and motifs, with the '80s debuting camouflage and animal and glitter treatments along with checkerboard, strike and glow-in-the-dark patterns. New materials, heights and shapes followed, evolving the Chuck from a signifier of specific subcultures to a customisable badge for those independent enough not to follow—and for an ever-evolving roster of collaborators.

It all began in 1934 with Disney, Converse's first brand partnership, which defined Chucks as the first shoes to feature Mickey Mouse. Despite this high-profile launch, it wasn't until the late noughties that collaboration became a central element of the Chuck. The 2008 Converse 1HUND(RED) Artists Collection commissioned 100 global musicians, graphic designers and graffiti artists to use the Chuck as a canvas on which to express their support of the fight against AIDS, empowering the community for a cause and unleashing a dam of creativity. The stream of joint creations has remained steady, including signature contributions from the brand's longest-standing collaborator, Comme des Garçons (CDG) PLAY.

Converse's 1934 partnership with Disney defined the Chuck as the first shoe to feature Mickey Mouse.

By 1977, Chuck Taylor All Stars were available in a spectrum of colours—as this athletic footwear catalogue reveals.

Replicas of Andy Warhol's Chucks were part of the Dover Street Market 2024 exhibition "Andy Warhol: Social Disease".

Custom chandelier featuring black Chucks. Photograph by Ryan Stifler.

In 2015, the Chuck 70 became part of the Converse x PLAY Comme des Garçons  
collaboration.

The 2024 Chuck 70 De Luxe Squared embellished the Chuck with Swarovski crystals.

The instant, persistent popularity of the Converse x PLAY Comme des Garçons partnership confirmed what had been apparent for decades: the Chuck effortlessly resides in high-fashion spheres, whose leading visionaries grew up with the shoe, influenced by its anti-conformist ethos and customisable style. As fashion designer Rick Owens put it, "When I think of Converse, I think of the black and white Chuck Taylors and the punk rock generation. These have always been iconic pillars of my aesthetic".As the noughties wore on and digital media democratised access to the fashion world, the Chuck cemented its status in this once-rarefied yet open-minded world. It graced runways in both original and bespoke forms at the same time as it populated the pages of glossies and appeared in street-style snaps from global fashion weeks.

In 2021, Rick Owens reimagined the Chuck 70 as the TURBODRK Chuck 70. Photo by OWENSCORP.

Marc Jacobs outfitted models in Chucks for his iconic 1992 Perry Ellis "Grunge" collection.

Lila Moss in Converse x Isabel Marant Chuck 70 Ox sneakers, part of a collaborative 2025 collection.

The 2012 Converse Made in Maine boot reimagined the Chuck, nodding to its rich American heritage.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander sporting Chucks in a 2025 NBA Tunnel Walk.

The Converse x Feng Chen Wang 2-in-1 Chuck 70, inspired by the designer's Chinese heritage.

Deeply entwined in the fabric of global culture, the Chuck has likewise witnessed a myriad of historical moments, adorned the feet of diverse history-makers and embedded itself into the greater societal landscape.

At the Soweto Township in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2015, a traditional Zulu dancer performs in Chucks.

An ad from the Converse 1990 All You Need campaign placed Chucks on the Berlin Wall.

In Beyoğlu, Turkey, Chucks are carefully preserved in a pickle jar. Photo by Aytekin Gezici.

Converse's ongoing support of self-expression was on display at the 2024 Boston Pride Parade.

Chucks at The Town Festival in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2023. Photo by Cauê Paciornik.

As its endless iterations prove, the Chuck could likely claim the title of the most customised sneaker in history. It has been splatter-painted and Sharpied; adorned with badges, pins and spikes; embroidered and cross-stitched; inverted. Like a fingerprint, each expression reflects its creator's unique creativity. As confirmed by Converse All Star Rocco Montagnoli Bruzzone. "Chucks have helped me express myself and my individuality since I was a child, when I used to sketch on them. Now, I wear a clean pair of Chucks to my meetings".

Recognising the powerful relationship a one-of-a-kind Chuck fosters with its wearer, the brand introduced limited-edition offerings&nbsp;as far back as 1988, via mail-order catalogue. Next came hyper-local Chuck collections, such as Lunar New Year and City Packs. Often made in collaboration with local creators, these city-exclusive designs weave the distinct cultural weft of their locale into the Chuck's signature form. In 2015, Converse further evolved its personalisation platform with the introduction of Converse By You, a digital design programme that reached new heights with the record-breaking 2024 Converse By You x Billie Eilish collaboration—all in an effort to bring creators closer to their Chucks.

And that's just the first century.

The shoe's journey from afterthought to global icon defies convention, which begins to explain why the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star has served as a talisman of self-expression for multiple generations, subcultures and genres: It has never tried to fit in.

Journey of an icon: the history of the Chuck Taylor All Star

Words: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/davis-jones-senior-editor" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Davis Jones</a> Images: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/dan-vernon-contributing-photographer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Dan Vernon</a> and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/sofieke-van-bilsen-contributing-photographer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Sofieke van Bilsen</a>

A <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/faith-kipyegon-wins-gold" target="null">legendary runner</a>. A <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/breaking4-faith-kipyegon-vs-the-four-minute-mile" target="null">legendary goal</a>. Faith Kipyegon is one of the most accomplished middle-distance runners in history. To push herself beyond simply earning more gold hardware, she set her sights on breaking a barrier thought to be indomitable—running a sub-4-minute mile. To match that goal, Nike is bringing its full power of sports science research and design expertise to create the integrated made-for-speed products to help get her there: a first-of-its kind speed suit, a sports bra made of a revolutionary 3D-printed performance material and a featherweight spike that turns the dial on innovative features up to 11.

See how Nike innovators created a one-of-one suit, bra and track spike to help the world champion become the first woman to break the 4-minute mile.

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Behind the scenes of Faith Kipyegon's Breaking4 attempt day

The Breaking4 journey: Faith Kipyegon and Nike's unforgettable project

10 details Nike obsessed over to support Faith Kipyegon and Breaking4

Journey of an icon: the history of the Chuck Taylor All Star

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Meet the dream team behind Faith Kipyegon's Breaking4 attempt

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