When the most decorated 100-meter 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 honor 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 colors of her nation’s flag for her final finish —&nbsp;gold-hued 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-meter 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-meters 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 track and field’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 the now 276 incredible races and finish line moments, thank you, Shelly-Ann.Below, go behind the scenes of the G.O.A.T.’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 in-house photographer to 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 sports 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 ability to work in high pressure environments for athletes.

Sofieke van Bilsen

Photo Essay

Icon Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Ran Her Final 100 Meter 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 &amp; CEO Mark Parker to debut his Nike Zoom LeBron V "China" colorway.

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’ 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, emphasizing 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 grueling, 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 kilometers, with elevation gains of 1,200 to nearly 10,000 meters — the grit, determination, joy and freedom trail running gives you is worth every ounce of work. See for yourself.

<h3>ROSS GOLLAN</h3>Race: ETC; 15km with 1,200m elevation gain Global finish rank: 29th

<h3>MARIE NIVET</h3>Race: Experience Trail Courmayeur (ETC); 15km with 1,200m elevation gain Global women’s finish rank: 7th

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

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

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

<h3>DREW HOLMEN</h3>Race: CCC; 101km 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

NExt volume

Emily Abbate is a Brooklyn-based, veteran journalist on a mission to empower women to live healthier, happier and more-motivated lives. Now a 15-time marathoner, the certified wellness coach and former fitness editor at SELF is the brains behind <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/bit.ly/hurdlepodcast__;!!KLCbKzk!koJf4niKivkRTNFXiKFGc-Rp9X7CYwLRzeMh0OM15o--0KLEXrR41gHvdUO5ts-iOJJwalmx8rzIkSs$" target="_blank">Hurdle</a>, a podcast acclaimed by The New York Times as “addictive,” with over 10 million downloads with listeners in more than 120 countries. You can find her most recent bylines in Marie Claire, Runher, and Women’s Health. Plus: Learn more about her in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/introducing-the-after-dark-tour-series-embracing/id1692035962?i=1000775769561" target="_blank">her interview</a> kicking off the After Dark Tour on Coach Bennett’s podcast.

Emily Abbate

The 800-meter race is the ultimate collision in track and field: a brutal, oxygen-deprived effort where the power of a sprinter smashes directly into the relentless engine of a distance runner.&nbsp;You don’t just run an 800. You survive it.Among the best to ever dance at this ragged edge of human endurance is the reigning Olympic champion <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/keely-hodgkinson-nike-interview" target="_blank">Keely Hodgkinson</a>, whose unapologetic personality, fierce competitiveness and elegant style have made her an unmistakable icon of the sport.For the latest step in her unyielding pursuit of every fractional advantage against the clock, Hodgkinson has worked alongside the Nike Innovation team to create a one-of-one system of speed she’ll unveil in front of a home crowd in London.Built to Hodgkinson’s exact performance and design specifications, her custom suit is meticulously engineered to help her push the limits of contemporary track and field — marking the latest chapter in Nike’s history of supporting athletes with custom performance innovations.

The Anatomy of a Uniform

Most athletes step onto the track dripping in color and pattern. But when Hodgkinson takes the starting line in London, she’ll be wearing stark, uninterrupted black.

“Keely has an immense amount of personal confidence when she wears black,” says Hannah Amis, Director, Innovation Apparel Product Design. “It’s sleek, it’s brave, and it allowed us to celebrate her vibrant personality through color-shifting, 3D-printed vortex generators instead.”The suit’s striking silhouette is a product of 4D design methodology, a system that charts apparel patterning through a body moving across time and space rather than across a flat plane or static 3D form.&nbsp;“Our team studied every detail of how Keely moves through space, ensuring the suit works with her stride, her mechanics and her race demands, creating a distraction-free fit that allows her to focus solely on performance,” says Amis.The pattern itself is designed to accommodate Hodgkinson’s maximum stride length without creasing or bunching, a consequence of less-than-perfect fit that could slow her down. To complement this handcrafted second skin, the back also features a massive, dramatic cut-out.&nbsp;“The large opening at the back has been a favorite of Keely’s since day one,” says Amis. “She loves that it’s so different from any other race suit — marrying her vision with our innovation to offer a new expression of performance apparel on the track.”

The Aerodynamic Frontier

To fight back against the wind, Nike innovators leaned heavily on a fundamental truth of sport science: Skin is slow. To maximize aerodynamic efficiency, the design team doubled down on coverage by introducing a sleek speed hood.“When she first tried the hood on during a fitting session in South Africa, she stepped out laughing and smiling so big, saying, ‘This is mental!’” recalls Amis. “But it’s a true performance piece. The hood streamlines the hairline and manages the chaotic aerodynamics of hair in motion. Of course, Keely’s ponytail is iconic to who she is as a person, so we engineered an exact, strategic opening to let her hair flow out the back flawlessly.”Look closely, and you’ll also see that there are structural slits in the sides of the hood so Hodgkinson’s 18-gram Nike Vision Airelon Force E sunglasses can slot directly against her temples without stretching the fabric, completing the look and providing a psychological edge.

Inevitable turbulence is further tamed by Nike’s fastest vortex generators: 3D-printed delta shapes computationally arrayed along the shoulders, thighs, torso and hood. These tiny devices generate targeted “mini tornadoes,” forcing fast-moving air to attach to the slower airstreams trailing the body rather than separating into a drag-inducing wake.“There’s a beautiful, healthy tension between mathematical function and visual aesthetic,” says Amis. “We spent six months endlessly tweaking, shifting and obsessing over every detail. Even during our final meeting in Manchester, I checked in to see if she wanted to back out of the hood. She told me she was completely all in. When she pulls it up, it creates an absolute zero-distraction zone. She's locked in.”

A Lineage of Bespoke Innovation

Handcrafted almost entirely within the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/lebron-james-innovation-center-nike-sport-research-lab" target="null">LeBron James Innovation Center</a> at <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-philip-h-knight-campus-announcement" target="null">Nike’s Philip H. Knight Campus</a>, Hodgkinson’s speed suit continues Nike’s tradition of creating athlete-specific innovations while showcasing the next evolution of the company’s innovation process. By bringing athletes, designers, engineers and scientists together under one roof, Nike can move faster from insight to invention, turning athlete feedback into performance solutions with unprecedented speed and precision.This culture of innovation began with co-founder Bill Bowerman’s obsession with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/bill-bowerman-nike-s-original-innovator" target="null">creating custom track spikes for his runners</a> and expanded over Nike’s early years to include bespoke apparel and footwear for elite athletes across disciplines.In 1988, for example, Nike outfitted the U.S. rowing team with an array of bespoke aerodynamic innovations, including a hooded full-body suit. Wheelchair racer Craig Blanchette’s early body suits of the same era helped inspire Nike’s Project Swift, which outfitted Australian sprinter Cathy Freeman in a full-length suit that used zoned aerodynamics to both reduce drag and help regulate muscle temperature.

In 1988, Nike outfitted the U.S. rowing team with an array of aerodynamic suits, including a seamless tank top, shorts, a hooded full-body suit and custom shoes.

1988

Craig Blanchette, a wheelchair racer and 21-time world record holder, signed with Nike in 1988, when the two began experimenting with aerodynamic racing tops and body suits for speed.

The early experiments with Blanchette’s speed suits helped inspire Project Swift in 2000, culminating in a full-length body suit worn by Australian sprinter Cathy Freeman. The suit used principles from zoned aerodynamics to both reduce drag and help regulate muscle temperature.

2000

While the Swift Suit grabbed headlines in Sydney, the Swift Skin became a game-changer for the sport of speed skating. Appearing in both the 2002 and 2006 Olympics, Nike’s body suits helped advance research into efficient airflow and drag reduction on the ice. Nike spent more than 900 hours in wind tunnels and drag tanks testing the product.

2002 and 2006

Following breakthroughs from the Nike Pro TurboSpeed kit in 2012, Nike carried its aerodynamics expertise into single articles of race gear like tops, bottoms, sleeves and socks in the form of Aeroblade technology: tiny geometric, silicone-based nodes designed to help reduce drag. The tech would later be applied to kinesio tape for greater application across the arms and the legs.

2012

Nike’s endeavor to break the 2-hour marathon in 2017 didn’t just mark the advent of the super shoe. It progressed Nike’s deepest research around aerodynamics in apparel design. Every article of gear — from the top to the half tight, from the sock to the tape — was textured with Aeroblade technology to reduce drag.

2017

Marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge attempting to break the 2-hour marathon for Nike's Breaking2.

Designed for Faith Kipyegon’s attempt to break the 4-minute mile, the 2025 Nike Fly Suit brought a new level of precision and specificity to body suit design. Some of the half-sphere Nike Aeronodes on the suit and its sleeves were smaller than a pencil tip.

2025

Middle-distance champion Faith Kipyegon attempting to break the 4-minute mile at Nike’s Breaking4.

Nike carried forward learnings from Freeman’s gold-medal performance in Sydney, debuting Swift Skin speed-skating suits that helped advance research into efficient airflow and drag reduction. The brand’s TurboSpeed and Aeroblade race apparel from the 2010s then raised the bar by including tiny geometric, silicone-based nodes designed to help reduce drag.That technology took on a new level of precision in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/faith-kipyegon-breaking4-speed-kit-behind-the-design" target="null">Faith Kipyegon’s 2025 Nike Fly Suit</a>, which included half-sphere Nike Aeronodes, some smaller than a pencil tip, to split the air in front of Kipyegon to reduce drag like never before.Hodgkinson’s speed suit advances this decades-long commitment to innovation, empowering her to lock in and pursue her dreams in confidence.Learn more about Hodgkinson’s <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-unveils-keely-hodgkinson-speed-suit-a-bespoke-expression-of-racing-innovation" target="_blank">one-of-one Nike speed suit</a> and her <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/keely-hodgkinson-speed-and-style-converge-in-her-first-signature-nike-running-collection" target="null">first signature Nike Running collection for all athletes</a> in the NIKE, Inc. Newsroom.

Built to Hodgkinson’s exact performance and design specifications, her custom suit is meticulously engineered to help her push the limits of contemporary track and field — marking the latest chapter in Nike’s history of supporting athletes with one-of-one performance innovations.

Nike Running

Making It

How Nike Teamed With Keely Hodgkinson to Create Her Zero-Distraction Speed Suit

About Nike - Stories from Inside NIKE, Inc.

Words: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/rachel-cavanaugh-contributing-writer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Rachel Cavanaugh</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>

The boldest ideas don’t begin with guarantees. They begin with a dream — and an audacious commitment to make it real. That’s exactly how Nike FlyWeb, the company’s newest performance material, came to life. The first-of-its-kind 3D-printing innovation was born through years of experimentation and a resolve to do what had never been done before.&nbsp;Nike FlyWeb represents a radical shift in how performance apparel is made and what it can feel like.Unlike traditional athletic apparel, which is typically knit or woven from yarn, FlyWeb is made from TPU — a soft, pliable polymer — and 3D-printed to form the desired product.&nbsp;Three-dimensional printing is nothing new for the footwear industry or Nike. This is, however, the first time Nike has applied the manufacturing method to high-performance sports apparel for an athlete, says Janett Nichol, Nike VP of Innovation.&nbsp;

Creating Nike FlyWeb

“What works on a shoe doesn’t just translate to something you wear on your body,” she explains. “It took years of re-engineering — not just the materials but the design approach itself — to make FlyWeb feel soft, breathable and beautiful enough for apparel.”The first product Nike design teams chose to tackle in the new material? One that hasn’t changed in material form since its inception: the bra.The Nike FlyWeb Bra is an ode to minimalism. The FlyWeb material is one single, seamless layer, built through computational design so that Nike designers could control the fit and support down to the millimeter, adjusting density, airflow and stretch across different zones of the garment.“We had to re-engineer everything — dismantling what we knew, then putting it back together — to make it wearable next to skin,” says Nichol.

The result is something athletes have never felt before. The Nike FlyWeb Bra doesn’t just reduce bulk or manage moisture more efficiently. It creates an entire sensory shift. For women athletes, it eliminates the multi-layer barrier found in most sports bras, unlocking airflow and comfort in ways traditional construction simply can’t.“It’s soft. It’s light — so light, it feels like you’re not wearing anything at all,” adds Nichol. “That’s the No. 1 thing testers tell us: It disappears on your body yet somehow delivers incredible support.”That support doesn’t come from compression or layering but rather from the structure itself: The computationally-designed pattern is specifically engineered to be denser in areas that need more containment.

Nike FlyWeb fluidly engages when the athlete moves, creating responsive athletic support without relying on seams, straps or extra material. That means pure freedom of movement.“You can actually feel the air on your chest,” says Nichol. “Most women have never experienced that while running. We don’t even think about it because it’s just not something we’ve ever expected to feel.”On June 26 in Paris, Faith Kipyegon will attempt to become the first woman in history to break the 4-minute mile, an effort that’s been dubbed “Breaking4.” And as she takes to the track for the legacy-defining attempt, she’ll be wearing a one-of-one sports bra made from the breakthrough material.

Nike FlyWeb material will debut during Faith Kipyegon's historic attempt to break the 4-minute mile.

Because of its light, breathable design, Faith's Nike FlyWeb Bra will help her body stay cooler during her all-out sprint.

Faith's FlyWeb Bra has a gossamer-soft hand feel and weight that's barely there.

It was her ambition — and the scale of that goal — that helped push Nike FlyWeb from bra prototype to bespoke product.“Everyone was a thought partner; we really put our heads together,” says Lisa Gibson, Senior Product Manager, Apparel Innovation. “And when you have a team working in synergy, believing in Faith and this moment, that’s when things start to magically unlock. It’s that Nike magic.”

FlyWeb’s debut isn’t only a material milestone. It’s the start of a new era in how performance apparel is made.What began as a moonshot of its own — an experiment to reimagine how we think about apparel — quickly accelerated into a breakthrough once Kipyegon’s goal came into view.&nbsp;“We knew that it was an opportunity for us to look at what we had in our arsenal and what we could really use to help her break this goal,” says Nichol. “We realized a gift had been dropped in our laps, and it was up to us to rise to the moment.”Now&nbsp;that the material is here, its potential is beginning to unfold.&nbsp;"We’re just scratching the surface," says Nichol. "This is a true unlock, not just for bras but for how we design and build high-performance apparel going forward. It opens the door to entirely new ideas for how athletes experience sport through what they wear."

Featherweight, soft and breathable, Nike FlyWeb — a first-of-its-kind 3D-printing innovation — is a sports apparel material like no other.

Feature

Innovation

The Future of Performance Apparel Is Here

Basketball is a nuanced game of human movement. At the LeBron James Basketball Court, Nike scientists use an advanced blend of methods to study it.<h3>What It Is</h3>The LeBron James Basketball Court is a FIBA regulation-size basketball court housed in the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL), on the fourth floor of the LeBron James Innovation Center.&nbsp;Every aspect of the building is enormous in scope, and the capabilities of his basketball court, located in a lab that has more than 80,000 square feet of data-collection space, is no exception. Nestled inside the largest sport-focused force plate and motion-capture installation in the world, the LeBron James Basketball Court sets the gold standard for gathering basketball data.

NSRL Basketball Court Jumping 1

Underneath the hardwood sit 11 force plates arranged at key spots on the floor, like around the three-point line and inside the key. The plates measure an incredible volume of data, at a frequency of 2,500 contact force data points a second. The plates are so sensitive that they can pick up an athlete’s heartbeat. All of the force plates are mounted on a subfloor disconnected from the surrounding floor so that they do not pick up footfalls from across the court.&nbsp;With the court, scientists can observe from the ground up how athletes interact with footwear. Using a special version of the ground reaction force plate with a translucent window flush with the hardwood, scientists shine a special LED light through the surface of the window, allowing them to observe on camera how a shoe’s traction pattern responds during certain movements. Scientists can also translate the high-res video through light-intensity imaging software to quantify areas of highest contact on a shoe’s outsole; this can influence design details, like the traction pattern itself, the rubber compound and even the midsole composition.&nbsp;

No other basketball court has the same motion-capture capabilities as this one. Researchers fit athletes with markers across their bodies to enable high-fidelity capture of minute changes in athlete movements, interpreted through advanced software. High-speed video from the many cameras suspended by the court’s outer rigging can break down the ways a player dribbles, pivots, sprints and slides. Meanwhile, physiological data, like a player’s oxygen consumption and heart rate, can be recorded in real time through wearable devices.&nbsp;

NSRL Basketball Court Cutting 2

<h3>What It Helps Us Do</h3>If a basketball product is to be measured objectively, it should be done by how it influences a player’s movement. No surprise, this is best seen in a real, unrestricted game. Last winter, the lab concluded its first season of the NSRL Basketball League, a women’s evening tournament featuring four squads with teammates recruited from both inside and outside of Nike. All players competed either collegiately or professionally. The games are a full four quarters, on a full court, with a team of referees. The rules are as core as you’d expect from any basketball scrimmage. What’s different about this league is how the NSRL’s tools are seamlessly integrated into the gameplay. For example, motion software depicts the common paths that players take by position, from a perimeter-oriented guard to a big who protects the paint. It’s through tools like these that scientists can measure whether a player is moving with more speed or agility based on the shoes they are wearing. Heart rate monitors can help researchers understand whether a shoe can mitigate fatigue throughout a game.&nbsp;

The ingenuity of the league stems from a challenge inherent to the sport: Basketball movement is complicated. Its style is not as linear as other sports. Basketball is like jazz, filled with unexpected changes of direction, speed and rhythm. A research setting for basketball has to include enough features to allow players to cut loose, break outside of a contrived environment, and play as they would naturally, in addition to controlled protocols that break down all the variables of the complex sport. That’s why the LeBron James Basketball Court, as a research facility, is as nuanced as the sport itself.

NSRL Basketball Court Drone 1

Nestled inside the largest sport-focused force plate and motion-capture installation in the world, the high-tech court helps scientists study players in an unrestricted environment.

Nike Sports Science

Next Level

The LeBron James Basketball Court

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What would the back of your athlete trading card say? That’s what the Nike Sport Research Lab's Baseline testing is for: A way for all athletes to understand their physical tools.

John Shiel photographs the truth of Innovation—unpolished, intimate and in progress. He explores the choreography of art, science, and athletes, documenting an honest record of Nike Innovation’s inner life, covering the rebels, dreamers, and makers who are forging the future of sport.He leads the Creative Studio in Nike Innovation, tracking the next frontier of Innovation stories that have the power to inspire athletes everywhere.

John Shiel

The NSRL Baseline Testing

This game is beautiful, and even more so when it’s broken down into its fundamental parts. The Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) Football Pitch is where scientists take the game into the future.&nbsp;What it is Under the crossbar, a soccer ball soars to the back of the net. The footballer who kicked it is covered in reflective motion capture markers across their lower body. A group of biomechanics researchers stand nearby, collecting data from their command center. With the motion capture system, the researchers are measuring the velocity of the player’s kick, the force they’re exerting into the ground, and the exact coordinates of where the ball lands inside the goal.&nbsp;This pitch is inside the NSRL, a worldclass sport science facility on the 4th&nbsp;floor of the LeBron James Innovation Center. At 8,600 square feet, the pitch is one of the most advanced football spaces in the sport. The artificial turf surface, used in many professional stadiums, is embedded with force plates. Motion capture cameras strung across rigging, timing gates that are set underneath different zones of the pitch, high-speed video, and shot tracking are all tools used by the research team. Together, they allow researchers to better understand what footballers need to help them perform.

Sophia Wilson NSRL Testing Loop 1

What it helps us do Those who love football will tell you it’s unlike any other game in the world. Joe Helseth, NSRL Principal Researcher, says that feeling holds true even when the sport is put through a biomechanical filter.Football is an extremely complex and fluid game, he says. The physical demands on the player are immense. Throughout a match there are rapid changes of direction, bursts of accelerations and decelerations, and sustained periods of moderate intensity movements. Players also must be able to manipulate and strike the ball with power and precision. Products need to be designed to meet those various demands of the game.&nbsp;

That’s why the NSRL has audacious goals that are meant to take the game’s players into the future. For example, the Phantom Luna boot, released in 2023, was the result of years of research on the NSRL pitch which helped Nike scientists and engineers create Cyclone 360, a circular cleat pattern designed to reduce the rotational traction between the boot and the surface, which is believed to be related to the risk of knee injuries. This study of traction has its roots in the lab, but it has since reverberated outside the walls of the NSRL and into Nike’s bigger commitment to help players stay in the game. In April, Nike’s New York City Headquarters hosted the launch event of Project ACL, a joint 3-year research study between Nike, FIFPRO, Leeds Beckett University and the NWSL, with a goal to better understand how to reduce ACL tears among female footballers.&nbsp;Moving this grade of research forward starts and ends with the boot. Understanding how a football boot performs largely comes down to three qualities: fit (comfort), ride (underfoot technology) and traction. The cutting-edge tools on the NSRL pitch allow researchers to break down these variables. For example, force plates can reveal the amount of force a player is putting into the ground while sharply cutting, providing insight into how players use the available traction provided by a new stud orientation. Timing gates, combined with motion capture during an agility drill, clock how a player sprints through zones, and exactly where they may be gaining or losing ground.

This year’s Mercurial Superfly, seen on pitch during this summer’s tournament, was tested in the lab to harness the full power of Zoom Air for the footballer (2022 marked the first time that football-specific Zoom Air appeared in a Mercurial). Incorporating Zoom Air into a boot can’t just be done on a whim; the team studied the right shape, placement and volume to act on the athlete during push-off.&nbsp;How can Zoom Air work harmoniously with the sport’s movements&nbsp;and&nbsp;the variety of playing surfaces so players can hit their top-end speed?&nbsp;Throughout the innovation process, designers and developers worked with researchers in the NSRL to evaluate the functionality of various Mercurial prototypes. Researchers examined how different Zoom Air units influence the way players move on the pitch. This can be studied through tests that measure metabolic power, sprinting performance, and lower extremity biomechanics using those precise tools on, above and surrounding the pitch. After years of prototyping, the Mercurial Superfly coming to the pitch for this summer’s tournament landed on an 8mm bag, tuned to provide energy return to a player at the moment they need it most. It helps give the feeling of kickback that players need at a full sprint.&nbsp;“Ultimately, the boot is a tool for footballers to wield,” says Helseth. “Our research process is an important component of how we develop boots. “Utilizing the data we can capture and the expertise of our researchers, we can guide development through an objective lens. That allows us to make systems that take human performance somewhere new.”<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/topics/nike-football-2026" target="_blank">See more of our Universe of Nike Football.</a>

Marcus Rashford NSRL Testing 1

This game is beautiful, and even more so when it’s broken down into its data-driven parts.

Welcome to the Most High-Tech Space in Football: The NSRL Pitch

Less than 400 meters from the Santa Monica coastline, curious runners lined the corner of a vacated parking lot. It was February of 2022. Blaise Williams, PhD, MPT, remembers the conditions well. He was ushering runners who were competing in a Redondo Beach 10K race through a pop-up experience of <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.nike.com/nike-sport-research-lab-form" target="_blank">NSRL Form</a>, the Nike Sport Research Lab’s newest movement-analysis tool, which was still in beta testing. Williams, a Principal Sport Scientist in the NSRL, had brought his team to gauge interest among the participating runners.&nbsp;To the naked eye, the testing area featured a tent, a treadmill and 10 high-speed cameras mounted onto struts. But the reality was much more rigorous, culminating years of professional research inside and outside the lab. The cameras tracked an athlete’s biomechanical gait as they jogged for two minutes on the treadmill. Afterward, they’d receive a one-on-one consultation and a customized head-to-toe report on their movement pattern once it was fed through an NSRL-generated algorithm. The report was supplemented with running form suggestions, salient NTC workouts, and shoe recommendations based on the runner’s current profile to help them achieve their goals.That day, things were not going to plan. The computer monitors tracking the data inputs were fizzling out in the sun. The cameras were overheating. Later that night, Williams and the team would stay up until 3 a.m. trying to help bulletproof the equipment against the mid-afternoon heat for the following day’s testing. They woke up that morning exhausted, struggling to keep their eyes open, which made the sight in front of them that much more remarkable: a line of runners trailing outside the tent, ready to get in on this first-of-its-kind feedback tool.&nbsp;The moment sealed the notion that NSRL Form was a tool athletes wanted, says Williams. “Even though everything seemed to go wrong, to see that kind of curiosity from runners — we knew we were onto something.”

Williams began putting pen to paper on NSRL Form three years ago, though he had been ruminating on the idea of such a tool for years. Prior to Nike, Williams’ two decades of experience as a physical therapist and biomechanist had taught him that runners craved more self-awareness of how they moved, be it for enhancing performance, preventing injury or even knowing where to start. But actually being more self-aware of their movement was almost like telling a person to evaluate themselves brushing their teeth. It was difficult to be in a state of reflection with such a natural act.Someone else — or something else — needed to be in the room, another pair of eyes to help athletes see themselves move. Moreover, the process for evaluating the runner needed to be scientific. It couldn’t be like a typical gait analysis that you get at a running boutique store, which is usually based on footage of a runner taken below the shin and then analyzed by a store employee who may or may not have any professional experience in biomechanics.&nbsp;The employee would then funnel you toward a shoe to purchase based on your foot shape and your video footage.Instead, the analysis had to be more rigorous, more comprehensive. If NSRL Form was to succeed, it had to be specific to every runner, bringing a depth of insight that observed and interpreted the unique ways in which every runner moves through their world. No runner is alike. Neither is their running profile, nor their opportunities for improvement, nor their prescription to reach their goals. Every piece of data from NSRL Form had to come together to reveal, in effect, a runner’s biomechanical fingerprint.“Nike has the unique ability to know the whole athlete. NSRL Form is expansive. The tools we develop study the entire human body as one complete unit,” says Kathleen Poe, Sr. Director of Field Services, NSRL. “That means every human body, not just an elite athlete’s. With a tool like this, we can bring the insights of the NSRL outside of our walls, to all athletes.”

Williams (pictured), Poe and a team of researchers in the NSRL imagined the method that NSRL Form would take: Cameras mounted around a treadmill would analyze a runner’s movement, and then an algorithm created by Nike’s data scientists would use the footage to create a score across different movement variables, like how much your body bounces up and down, how far it leans or how deep your hips drop with every step.

The team started with 18 variables but quickly realized that volume of info was overwhelming for a runner who wanted to apply the score’s feedback to actionable steps. “Sometimes runners will unknowingly kick their legs out to the side as part of their natural stride,” says Williams. “What’s a runner really going to do with that feedback?” Williams eventually narrowed down the variables from 18 to six.

Three variables were related to force created by the runner, and three were related to control of the runner’s body. When the analysis for each variable was quantified and displayed on the results screen, the rubric would resemble a hexagon, the data points stretching into a constellation, becoming a one-of-one biomechanical score.

Landing on the Variables

Williams and Poe began field research in January of 2022. The early tests for the tool were unassuming, almost covert: They set up a treadmill and rigged together monitors and cameras in a colleague’s garage in Northeast Portland. Poe remembers waving in volunteer testers from the sidewalk. She read the looks of confusion on some of their faces, wondering what exactly they had signed up for.&nbsp;The research team used field sessions like this, along with the pop-up testing site at Redondo Beach, to dial in NSRL Form’s overall experience for a visiting runner. Satellite locations in Nike running stores like Blue Ribbon Sports in Santa Monica, Calif., and Heartbreak Hill in Chicago and Newton, Mass., helped the research team understand what the customer impression in a brick-and-mortar store needed to be. “The experience for the feedback had to be smooth,” says Williams, adding with a laugh that “waiting 15 minutes to receive your results is about 13 minutes too long.” Around 15 seconds is all the program needs to collect 150 data points across your body to give you your custom readout.&nbsp;

The initial feedback was promising. Hundreds of tested runners who wanted to learn more about their running patterns filled out contact sheets for future news. They wanted to learn what the tool could see about their running form that they couldn’t discern for themselves. Over time, the testing helped the team arrive at an important conclusion. When purchasing shoes without any consultation, runners generally chose shoes that didn’t accommodate their movement pattern — like how a runner with a far reach might need a more cushioned midsole to help absorb ground impact. However, when presented their NSRL Form data with recommended footwear to fit their unique running needs, runners tend to pick the shoe that best fits their movement profile.As for NSRL Form’s next steps, the NSRL is already considering where the tool will expand (it’s now made its way to Shanghai at retail while winning two awards at a national innovation summit in China). Just as exciting, say Williams and Poe, is&nbsp;how&nbsp;NSRL Form will expand. Given NSRL Form’s method as a self-learning, ever-refining algorithm that studies how the body moves, the possibilities of scaling it to other devices, sports and products are nearly endless. Hypothetically, a future where you could upload a video clip of a treadmill session onto a phone app and have it send back your biomechanical reading isn’t far off. Neither is a tool that could study movement patterns specific to other sports, such as basketball or football. New athlete needs could be identified and new Nike products created to solve for them. Or NSRL Form could be applied to other products, such as sports bras, that have nuanced relationships with the individual athlete, their body type and their movement pattern.

What Does NSRL Form Measure?

Williams, Poe and the team of NSRL researchers are intent on following an important point: NSRL Form was never meant to be&nbsp;just&nbsp;a product-recommendation tool, and it never will be. In discussions about how a runner’s final report would look, the team discussed whether to include shoe recommendations at all. The reason goes back to what the team observed during those early field tests, like in that blistering parking lot in Redondo Beach, where the queue of runners stretched out the back, wanting to try Form firsthand.&nbsp;“You’ll notice the shoe recommendations are at the very end of the eight-page report,” says Williams. “That’s by design. We’re empowering athletes through information to make decisions based on how they move, regardless of the shoe they wear or even the sport they play. NSRL Form isn’t just a runner’s tool. It’s a&nbsp;running&nbsp;tool, designed to study your whole body. Nike knows its athletes. NSRL Form gives athletes the power to know themselves.”

Form Header

Using motion-capture technology and a self-learning algorithm developed by the Nike Sport Research Lab, NSRL Form is a head-to-toe analysis of how you move — and how to reach your goals.

The 2-Minute Test That Helps Every Runner Move Better

A single Nike Aero-FIT jersey begins as recycled yarn on a spool. Before it reaches an athlete on the world’s biggest stage, it will move through a specialized creation process — knit on a proprietary circular machine; dyed in precise lots; and extracted, finished, sublimated, cut, printed and hand-stitched panel by panel.&nbsp;&nbsp;Each step exists to protect the performance built into the material itself, a highly texturized knit that combines open and closed mesh zones to move air across the body, lift the fabric off the skin, and deliver more than twice the airflow of legacy Nike fabrics. That’s not nothing during a summer of sport that’s delivered some of the hottest conditions footballers have ever seen.&nbsp;Fitting, then, that <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-aero-fit-official-images" target="_blank">Aero-FIT</a> is also Nike’s first elite performance apparel made from 100 percent textile waste. Nike’s contract manufacturing suppliers use a textile-to-textile system enabled by advanced chemical recycling, creating a process that produces yarn comparable to virgin material.That material comes together through a blend of technology and human expertise, yarn and machine, hand and eye, made for the <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="_blank">athletes taking the pitch</a> and the fans standing with them in the same colors.See exactly how here.

How We Create Aero-FIT

When you’re playing for your country, nothing should distract you, least of all heat and sweat.

Nike Global Football

The Making of Aero-FIT: The Material Innovation Keeping Footballers Cooler on the Pitch

Athletes don’t compete in a vacuum, but having them train in a controlled setting can help Nike researchers design the most innovative apparel to help them compete. Introducing the environmental chambers in the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL), which can mimic nearly any environment an athlete might face. <h3>What They Do</h3>Thermoregulation, or the study of how you regulate your temperature when you're moving, happens in your body through a natural, physiological response: sweat. When your sweat evaporates, your body can cool down.&nbsp;Nike's environmental chambers help researchers study thermoregulation up close and personal with athletes. The NSRL has three different chambers for athlete testing, each named after a different Olympic venue (Rio, Sydney and Athens) and each studying the crossover between thermoregulation, apparel design and athlete performance. The chambers allow scientists to test how different variables impact either the heat load on an athlete's body or the regulation of an athlete's body temperature through sweat evaporation.In the chambers, researchers can dial the temperature anywhere from -4 degrees F to 122 degrees F. Radiant heat with special bulbs can match the intensity of the sun's rays (there’s variance within perceptions of “hot”; anyone who does a summertime road run in Los Angeles will tell you it’s a very different setting from running in the streets of Miami). Scientists can also generate wind speeds up to 11 mph.“In the chambers, we can fine-tune our regulation of temperature, humidity, airflow, and radiant heat so we can re-create the conditions in which athletes perform,” says Grant Simmons, PhD, Sr. Principal Researcher, Thermoregulation. “These tools help us understand athlete challenges, their interaction with clothing, and the benefits of product solutions designed to make them better."

The Nike Sport Research Lab’s environmental chambers help Nike researchers study the interaction between athletes, their apparel and their environment.

Ultrarunner Drew Holmen testing the new Nike Radical AirFlow top in the Sydney environmental chamber.

At the end of a session in the Rio chamber, scientists measure the athlete’s weight, the weight of the sweat in their apparel and the weight of the sweat in a pan underneath them to isolate the exact amount of sweat that’s evaporated.

In the Sydney chamber, athletes wear body sensors as they run on a treadmill that cover a range of data: skin temperature, heart rate, core body temperature and more.

After an athlete works out, they drape the sweaty garment they wore over a manikin and a thermal camera displays where the sweat is accumulating in the product.

<h3>What They Help Us Do</h3>In the Rio chamber, scientists study athletes in the heat to identify new opportunities for Nike DriFIT innovation. Here, the NSRL uses custom methods, developed specifically for the LeBron James Innovation Center, where the NSRL is housed, to study an athlete’s sweating efficiency, or the percentage of your sweat that evaporates to cool you during exercise. If you have sweat pouring down your forehead or dripping down your back or soaking your shirt or bra, you’re not sweating efficiently. The more efficiently you sweat, the slower you dehydrate, and the longer you can run, dance, play basketball, or compete in your chosen sport. As an athlete works out on a stationary bike, scientists use several different weight scales and custom engineered equipment to break down their sweating response into separate parts. By isolating the evaporated sweat from the sweat that drips off the body, beads up on your skin, or is absorbed and retained in clothing fabric, scientists can map the outcome of every gram of sweat secreted during exercise. This allows them to study the sweating response like they’d study a household budget; identifying areas of waste and opportunities to be more efficient by reducing excess sweat that dehydrates the athlete, but doesn’t cool them down.Nike scientists also need to pinpoint where athletes tend to sweat so apparel designers can embed sweat-wicking properties in high-need areas. This is the kind of detective work that happens in the Sydney chamber. Recorded by surface-mounted cameras, athletes wear a range of body sensors as they run on a treadmill. The sensors cover a range of data: skin temperature, heart rate, core body temperature and more. The goal of these studies is to understand the distinct needs for individual athletes during exercise, revealing preferences based on different metabolic states and environments. After an athlete works out, they drape the sweaty garment they wore over a manikin and a thermal camera displays where the sweat is accumulating in the product (the sweat is cooling the apparel fabric as it evaporates). Nike scientists ask athletes to drape the apparel over the manikin, versus evaluating it on body, so they can get past the complications in variations in skin temperature, which can influence the thermal imaging. Apparel designers use this info for computational design to “zone” a garment with the right kinds of sweat-wicking materials, tuned for areas of high or low sweat. The Sydney chamber helps scientists see sweat in a new light, literally.When scientists need to control even more variables, they tap the Athens chamber. It houses two of the NSRL’s primary tools to study sweat: a pair of thermal manikins named Hal (male) and Haley (female). These adult-sized manikins have a copper shell with a precisely-regulated temperature; the shell measures heat loss across 30 different zones over their body surface. That measurement helps Nike scientists assess the thermal properties of specific apparel worn by the manikins as the figures swing their arms and legs. For example, data collected across the chest helps scientists zero in on the ideal material properties for a sports bra. Scientists can test apparel in a matter of days using the thermal manikins, reducing a timeline that would take weeks with human volunteers.

NSRL Climate Chambers

The science of regulating your temperature is serious business in the Nike Sport Research Lab.

Sport Science

The NSRL Environmental Chambers

Dive Into Our Sport Science

Stories from inside NIKE, Inc.

Story Landing

Georgia Hunter Bell Takes the Nike FlyWeb Bra to Athlos London

Basketball

Behind the Design of the Caitlin 1

The Move

The Move: Creating Space for Shai’s Stepback

Creating Space for Shai’s Stepback

Short Stories

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

Toma Miami - Aiden Colocho

Toma Intro Loop 1

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

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

In the late 1950s, veteran track and field coach Bill Bowerman was dissatisfied with available running spikes, which were constructed of weighty leather and metal. As a result, he became obsessed with shaving ounces off shoes to help runners slash seconds off their times. His quest wound up redefining athletic footwear.&nbsp; Prior to this feat, Bowerman’s drive and relentless curiosity had precipitated a string of diverse accomplishments: Born in 1911 in Portland, Oregon, he excelled as a student-athlete while attending the University of Oregon and later gained acclaim as a high school football and track coach. He fought in World War II and came back a decorated hero. In 1948, Bowerman returned to his college alma mater and, during his 24-year tenure, led the university to four NCAA track titles and coached 16 sub-four-minute milers. Further, he introduced jogging to the community of Eugene in the 1960s, which helped spark a national phenomenon, and he served as the U.S. Olympic track coach in 1972.

Bowerman was also a mentor, coach and friend to Phil Knight, with whom he co-founded&nbsp;Blue Ribbon Sports, the precursor to Nike, in 1964. His confidence and counsel helped the company's original business model — importing and selling Japanese-made&nbsp;<a href="https://store.nike.com/us/en_us/pw/running-shoes/8yzZoi3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">running shoes</a>&nbsp;— succeed and grow.&nbsp;However, Bowerman’s own footwear innovations proved even more influential, shaping Nike’s ethos of leveraging athlete insights to design transformative products.

Building a Better Shoe

Bowerman first began tinkering with running shoes in the 1950s, when he wrote to several footwear companies proposing ideas for improving shoes to better serve runners. None accepted his recommendations. Frustrated but not deterred, Bowerman took matters into his own hands and, with the guidance of a local cobbler, learned how to make shoes. To start, he deconstructed existing racing shoes with his band saw and examined their anatomy. Then, he toyed with metal and plastic spike plates and assembled various uppers over diverse lasts. Later, a Springfield-based bootmaker provided technical advice and showed Bowerman how to craft shoe patterns.&nbsp;

Phil Knight became the first student-athlete to try a Bowerman original. In a letter to Knight dated August 8, 1958, Bowerman suggested a weight-training regimen and running schedule. He closed the letter with a postscript: If you have a pair of shoes that you think would make good flats, send them down to me. They will be ready for you when school starts. Bowerman fitted a handmade pair with an upper made of white rubber-coated fabric — “the kind you’d use for a tablecloth you could sponge off,” he explained — to Knight’s size. Knight says Bowerman chose him to try the shoes because he “wasn’t one of the best runners on the team. Bowerman knew he could use me as a guinea pig without much risk.”&nbsp; Moving forward, Bowerman custom fit shoes to his runners by drawing an outline of their feet, measuring widths and noting individualities, such as an extended heel or slim ankle. He experimented with dozens of textiles — kangaroo leather, velvet, deer hide, snakeskin and even fish skin — to find the ideal lightweight, stretchy and resilient material, churning out new creations on a weekly basis. As his prototypes grew more refined and reliable, he continued to seek alliances with footwear companies, to no avail. In an August 1960 letter to a Portland company requesting steel for spikes, Bowerman wrote: Most American shoemakers are not interested in what we track coaches think about track shoes. The best shoes...at this time are made by the Germans. Their sole material is not too good and I can either replace their sole or I can make my own shoe. I don’t think there is any question, certainly in my own mind there is not, that I now have the best shoe in the world – if I could just find some good American shoemaker to make it.

A Shoe in the Door

This opportunity finally arrived when Knight forged a relationship with Onitsuka in 1964, based upon the belief that less expensive Japanese-made running shoes could perform as well as standard-bearer German shoes. Subsequently, he and Bowerman invested 50-50 in the business of importing and selling running shoes, opening a path for Bowerman’s own ideas. The coach expressed his optimism in a letter to Onitsuka in May 1964: I hope that your arrangements with Mr. Knight would be such that I would be free to turn over the ideas that I have worked out on track shoes.&nbsp;Bowerman spent the following summer designing and in October traveled with his wife, Barbara, to Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics Games, where three of his Oregon runners were competing. The couple stayed an extra week so that Bowerman could meet with Onitsuka founder and CEO Kihachiro Onitsuka as well as S. Morimoto, a company executive. Bowerman explained his ideas and toured factories to study the cutting and stitching machines. He gained confidence in the Japanese shoemaking process and established relationships with the two leaders, ensuring a receptive audience for his future prototypes and suggestions.

The Dawn of Cortez

Bowerman’s first breakthrough with Tiger shoes surfaced the following spring, in 1965, the indirect result of a track meet. At the meet, University of Oregon distance runner and future Olympic marathoner Kenny Moore moved wide in an 880-meter race, into the path of a passing teammate. The misstep resulted in a spike-inflicted gash on the outside of his foot. That injury led to a stress fracture and one of Bowerman’s most enduring inventions. Early in Moore’s recovery from the spike-induced gash, the runner trained in the Onitsuka Tiger TG-22, a high-jump shoe that Blue Ribbon Sports mistakenly sold as a running shoe. When Moore’s X-ray showed a break across the third metatarsal, Bowerman asked to see his shoes and promptly ripped them apart. They had spongy cushioning in the heel and forefoot but zero arch support. “If you set out to engineer a shoe to bend metatarsals until they snap, you couldn’t do much better than this,” Bowerman growled. “Not only that, the outer sole rubber wears away like cornbread.”&nbsp; To correct the TG-22, Bowerman fashioned a running shoe with a cushiony innersole, soft sponge rubber in the forefoot and top of the heel, hard sponge rubber in the middle of the heel and a firm rubber outsole. In June of 1965, he sent Onitsuka instructions and samples for the shoe.

A month later, Morimoto responded, confirming that he was producing a training shoe to the specifications. But, Onitsuka had “some opinion as to the inserted sponge rubber at the heel.” Despite the objections, Bowerman pushed for the placement of sponge rubber in the heel, stating that it would help alleviate Achilles tendon issues. That summer, Moore rebounded from his stress fracture and logged more than 1,000 miles in Bowerman’s latest creations. Early Onitsuka prototypes featured two distinct pads in the heel and ball of foot, and a narrow heel. This eventually morphed into the full-length midsole Bowerman had originally conceived, a feature that ultimately became a major selling point for the shoe.Consequently, Onitsuka introduced the Bowerman-engineered Tiger Cortez, which an early 1967 catalog explained as: Designed to be the finest long distance shoe in the world. Soft sponge midsole through ball and heel absorbs road shock; high-density outer sole for extra miles of wear.

Consumers loved it. The Cortez was the first stable, comfortable shoe for the roads. It looked cool and debuted as running emerged as an American pastime, popularized by Bowerman and his 1967 book “Jogging.” And when Knight and Bowerman ceased importing and distributing running shoes through Blue Ribbon Sports and launched Nike as a designer and maker of athletic shoes, the Cortez silhouette carried over to the new brand. It also earned Bowerman a patent for its innovative continuously cushioned midsole. In July 1973, Runner’s World called the Nike Cortez “the most popular long-distance training shoe in the U.S.”

1973 Nike Cortez Ad

1977 Nike Cortez Tradition Ad

Waffle Windfall

The Cortez, however, was just the first of Bowerman’s celebrated inventions, which came to comprise eight registered patents, including shoes with an external heel counter, improved spike placement and a cushioned spike plate. It was also just the first success in his enduring quest to create the lightest running shoe possible.&nbsp;“He thought running shoes could be better,” Nike’s first full-time employee Jeff Johnson says about Bowerman’s early&nbsp;innovations. “He challenged accepted notions of traction, cushioning, biomechanics&nbsp;and even of anatomy itself.”Bowerman next sought to manifest a shoe with excellent traction on multiple surfaces, without metal spikes. The solve came over breakfast in 1970, as he&nbsp;contemplated the syrup-cradling depressions of the waffle on his plate. “What if you reversed the pattern and formed a material with raised waffle-grid nubs?” he wondered. He subsequently commandeered the family waffle iron and substituted melted urethane for batter. Unfortunately, Bowerman initially forgot to grease the iron with an anti-stick agent and it glued shut. Despite this setback, he persevered&nbsp;and fashioned a flexible, springy and lightweight rubber material with a raised, gridded pattern and grip traction.&nbsp;The Blue Ribbon Sports crew raced to debut the waffle sole at the upcoming 1972 U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Eugene. They had nylon uppers flown in from Japan to pair with waffle soles hand-cut from sheets of rubber made in Eugene. Early Blue Ribbon Sports employee Geoff Hollister glued the components together, creating shoes for a handful of trial competitors to wear during training or on the infield at Hayward Field.The hand-built shoes were dubbed the Moon Shoe due to the distinctive imprint they made in the dirt, which resembled the lunar footprints left behind by American astronauts during the era’s historic Apollo missions. The first iterations were crude, but runners liked the feel and traction of the waffle sole and word of the invention quickly spread. Bowerman further refined the concept and developed the iconic Waffle Trainer in 1974.&nbsp;

The rubber studs of the waffle sole offered give and cushioning that appealed to both elite athletes and everyday runners. The shoes, as TIME magazine wrote, were ‘’grabbed by the army of weekend jocks suffering from bruised feet.’’ The Waffle Trainer placed Nike on the global athletic footwear map, setting the stage for unparalleled growth. Bowerman’s legacy as an original thinker and innovator will forever be linked with the waffle sole, which like many brilliant inventions is so simple and intuitive it resonates immediately and broadly. Versions of it are still employed today in Nike footwear, as are Bowerman’s many other contributions to running shoe innovation, including the raised heel, the nylon upper and the continuous midsole.&nbsp;Nike’s footwear ideal has evolved, but Bowerman’s preoccupation with creating products that enable athletes to perform at their highest potential continues to fuel Nike's culture of innovation. Contemporary examples can be found in footwear technologies such as the Nike Free articulated outsole and the compressive woven-in support of Nike Flyknit uppers.&nbsp;

Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman's quest to create footwear to improve athlete performance is a driving force for Nike's ever-evolving approach to product innovation.

Bill Bowerman: Nike’s Original Innovator

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

The Young Footballers Behind England's X2 Collection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nike Training

For The Win

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

It was July 14, 1994, and Brasil and Italy were about to play for the most coveted trophy in football. The temperature at the Rose Bowl had climbed past 80 degrees, and by the time the two teams walked out of the tunnel, there were more than 94,000 people in the stands — and billions more watching from around the world.Among them was Phil Knight, co-founder and CEO of the world’s largest athletic footwear company. Nike had already transformed running and basketball, but football, despite captivating the world, remained a great sport and cultural frontier.As he watched, Knight noticed something beyond the score. The Brasileiros — eight of them in Nike Tiempos — played with a quality he couldn’t quite name. We know it now as joga bonito, Portuguese for “play beautifully,” a style that is <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-debuts-rip-the-script-a-step-inside-the-universe-of-nike-football" target="null">expressive, creative, joyful, unscripted</a>.Two days later, Knight pulled aside his global sports marketing director and said three words that would reshape the company’s relationship with football forever:&nbsp;“I want Brasil.”

The Mandate

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

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

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

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