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

There is no athlete like Oksana Masters. The 36-year-old is now the most decorated U.S. Winter Paralympian of all time — and the most decorated American athlete ever to compete in both the Summer and Winter Paralympics.She earned her first medal in rowing at the 2012 Summer Games in London and collected four golds in para biathlon and para cross-country skiing in the 2026 Winter Games in Milano Cortina, bringing her total count to 24. Across four sports and two seasons, Masters has built a career defined by movement between summer and winter competition, over more than a decade of elite performance. What defines her career isn’t just the medal count. Masters has repeatedly rebuilt her body and her training, returning to competition after surgeries and setbacks that forced her to start over. She has solidified a lasting legacy through a simple but demanding principle: the willingness to begin again. Here, she reflects in her own words on reinvention, resilience and what winning means to her now.

What I’ve learned is that I’m not attached to comfort, I’m attached to growth. Constant transition forces you to let go of who you were in the last season and what you knew. Your body changes, your training changes, your goals evolve. You don’t get to stay the expert for long. You have to be willing to be a beginner again — and I love that phase. I’ve learned that I thrive in that space.When I think about what feels most central to who I am as an athlete today, it’s not just one medal, one podium, or even a specific sport. It’s the process of constantly starting over. I’ve had to rebuild my body more times than I can count — after surgeries, after injuries, after setbacks that literally forced me back to square one. Every season has demanded a different version of me.&nbsp;Resetting each season has taught me adaptability. It’s taught me how to listen to my body, how to trust the process and how to separate my identity from one sport or one result. I’m not defined by snow or summer. I’m defined by my mindset. The transition keeps me hungry. It keeps me curious. It reminds me that growth happens when you’re willing to shift, learn, rebuild and be uncomfortable.

Moving between seasons isn’t a disruption. It’s a rhythm. And I’ve learned how to move with it instead of resisting it. That’s the key.Representing Team USA has always carried a responsibility that goes far beyond a race or a result. When I line up on a start line, I’m not just carrying my own story. I’m carrying the people who believed in me when the path didn’t exist yet. The adaptive athletes who are still fighting for access and opportunity and the next generation who might be watching and wondering if there’s space for them in sport. That’s something I feel every time I compete.&nbsp;Competing in the Paralympics isn’t pressure in a negative way — it’s purpose. It reminds me that showing up matters. If someone sees themselves in that moment and realizes that their story or their body doesn’t disqualify them from dreaming big, then everything I’ve been through has meaning beyond my own career.Heading into another Paralympic moment, I don’t feel defined by gold medals. I feel defined by the quiet mornings, the training-in-the-dark sessions, the moments when no one was watching and quitting would have been so much easier. That’s where the real work lives. That’s what has built every podium for me.I’m an athlete who refuses to let circumstances decide what’s possible or define my ceiling. I’m someone who keeps evolving, keeps pushing and will always keep showing up.Innovation has always been part of what makes longevity in sport possible. As athletes, we’re constantly learning how to adapt, whether that’s new training methods, new technology or new ways of understanding our bodies. Those advances create opportunities to push boundaries that once felt fixed.

For me, evolution is essential. When equipment, science and support systems continue to improve, it allows athletes to keep raising the level of performance and to stay competitive longer than people once thought possible.Every race is a new moment. Everything that came before it — the setbacks, the injuries, the training — all comes down to those few minutes where you get to test yourself again. There’s something incredibly powerful about that reset. It reminds me why I fell in love with sport in the first place. It’s not about perfection. It’s about seeing what happens when preparation meets belief.

Early in my career, success meant proving I belonged. It meant medals. It meant podiums — something tangible I could hold and say, “See, I earned this.” I carried so much of my story with me that I felt like I had to validate it every time I stepped onto that start line. But now success looks very different. Success is about impact. It’s about creating change for para-athletes, building opportunities, pushing for accessibility and making sure every ability has a place in sport. It’s about showing the world there’s no right or wrong way to line up at the start.If I can change one life —&nbsp;shift one person’s perspective on how they see themselves and what they believe they’re capable of — that’s my biggest win now. I still want to win. That fire hasn’t changed and never will. But today success is bigger than me. Medals are moments. Impact is the legacy.

The Nike athlete, and now most decorated U.S. Winter Paralympian, has repeatedly rebuilt her body and her training, returning to competition after surgeries and setbacks that forced her to start over. Here, she reflects on resilience and what winning means to her now.

For The Win

Oksana Masters on Reinvention and the Power of Starting Again

About Nike - Stories from Inside NIKE, Inc.

This is, obviously, a running story.But the story of the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-pegasus-42-official-images" target="_blank">Nike Pegasus</a> is also something more specific — a case study in how restraint, clarity and attention to fundamentals can produce lasting success. Launched in 1982, the Pegasus would go on to become Nike’s most consistent and popular running shoe of all time, a franchise that has endured across eras, innovations and shifting footwear philosophies. “There’s no modest way of saying this,” said Sebastian Tesche, Product Line Manager of the Pegasus 35. “The Peg is the single biggest and best running shoe in the world. It’s bigger than many of our competitors.”It wasn’t designed to be an icon. It was designed to solve a problem.

In the late 1970s, Nike’s earliest experiments with Air were full of promise but hindered by the realities of the technology. The 1978 Tailwind introduced Air to running yet it introduced stability issues that the company would spend the next several years trying to fix. The Columbia and Aurora that followed solved some of those problems but felt stiff at a time when runners wanted something livelier underfoot. Fortunately, Nike knew Air was a long game.&nbsp;

The great thing that we always thought about Air at that time — and it’s still true — is that it doesn’t lose its cushioning properties hardly at all through time,” said Howard Banich, who oversaw running product in 1982. “Jeff Johnson, Nike’s first employee, always wanted us to do an ad that showed a person coming back to the shoe store with just the Air bag from their shoe and saying, ‘I would like another shoe around this please.’ Because the Air bag was still going strong.”Still, the question remained: how do you put Air where it matters without making the shoe too expensive or too complicated?One solution came from an ongoing innovation project led by former Nike CEO Mark Parker. Known internally as the Air Wedge Trainer — the concept that would ultimately become the Pegasus —&nbsp;it borrowed an Internationalist upper and outsole, added a heel Air unit encapsulated in polyurethane and positioned Air right at heel strike. It was essentially a simpler, cheaper expression of Air and it tested well.

“A heel wedge still provided the benefits of Air where it was needed the most —&nbsp;under the heel at heel strike — but it was less expensive because it was really only a third of the size of the full-length Air-Sole that was used in the Tailwind,” Parker said.At the same time, New Balance had just released the 990 with a provocative tagline: “At a suggested retail price of $100, is the 990 too expensive or too inexpensive?” The price point shocked the market and galvanized Nike. If the competition was willing to push upward, Nike saw an opportunity to create a shoe that delivered performance at a more approachable cost.The Air Wedge Trainer, with its strong test results and modest bill of materials, suddenly looked like the perfect platform.

Building a “best practices” shoe

With the Air Wedge Trainer as a foundation, development for the Pegasus took place at Nike’s facility in Exeter, New Hampshire, where the heel Air wedge concept was built into a fully realized running shoe. Bill Peterson designed the outsole. Bruce Kilgore, deep in Air Force 1 development, offered design input. Parker integrated those ideas into a simple, functional upper: gray, with dark navy accents — a look one European sales rep later described as “a rainy day.”Nike also made a strategic shift to hit its target price of around $50: manufacturing moved to Korea, to the Poon Young factory. Very few running shoes were being produced in Korea at the time. Components had to be imported — Air wedges from the U.S., nylon from Germany — and Nike developers scrambled to refine techniques. “The Air unit didn’t fit correctly in the shoe at first,” recalled footwear innovation veteran Steve Roth. During a vacation back in the U.S., he spent two weeks in Saco, Maine resizing Air wedges by hand so they would sit properly in the midsole.Still, the project moved fast. In only about four months, Nike had a completed shoe — one built around Air and a carefully selected set of core features: A new EVA foam called Tomilite offered a resilient ride. A waffle outsole, with lugs oriented for motion, gave runners better ground contact and stability. The upper was simple, lightweight and unpretentious.

“The Pegasus was essentially our ‘best practices’ shoe,” Roth said. “It had Air, yes, but it was mostly about: what are the best features we can put in a product that hit the sweet spot of the market?”It wasn’t the flashiest running shoe in the line, nor was it meant to be. It was designed to work.

A running manual for the masses

Nike’s confidence in the Pegasus showed in the small details. The company had begun releasing “owner’s manuals” with its higher-profile footwear to help runners understand new technologies and the Pegasus received one, too. It walked consumers through Air, Tomilite and the shoe’s geometry. The transparency helped reinforce the Pegasus as a shoe built on clarity, usefulness and trust.

Naming the Pegasus

Today, many assume the Pegasus name came from the idea of a half-horse, half-winged creature, an allusion to the balance of EVA and Air in the midsole. But the real story is far simpler.To name the shoe, employees dropped suggestions into a bowl. Several slips of paper read Pegasus, including one from Mark Parker. Nike had been playing with mythology themes — Odyssey, Valkyrie — and Pegasus fit the family. “Names were a lot easier back then,” Parker said.The name stuck. And with it came the beginnings of what would become Nike’s most beloved running shoe.

The instant hit

Nike introduced the Pegasus at the 1982 New York City Marathon. While Alberto Salazar powered to his third consecutive win in a pair of Mariahs, the men’s Pegasus debuted in limited quantities as part of Nike’s technical running line. It launched to select dealers and quickly posted strong early sales: nearly $200,000 in under a month, with roughly 8,000 units sold. By December, that number had climbed to more than 35,000 pairs.When the Pegasus rolled out more broadly in early 1983, the reaction was immediate. “The initial reaction to the Pegasus was very good,” said Jim Docherty, who began his career as a Nike EKIN that year. “When the Tailwind hit the market, some consumers thought it was too soft because most midsoles were fairly firm at that time and the Tailwind was a big change from the norm. The Pegasus with heel Air bridged the gap between old EVA midsoles and total Air.”

For young runners and store employees alike, the Pegasus quickly became the reliable choice — the shoe you knew you could recommend.In 1983, long before he became a Nike Running veteran and future Pegasus PLM, Tim Slingsby was working in a running store as a high schooler. “The Pegasus was your go-to shoe when someone would come in, you would sell them,” he said. “As a high school kid, you knew it would work, it would perform, and it was a great price. It had everything.”Within six months, Nike had sold nearly 300,000 pairs, generating $6.4 million in men’s sales alone.The formula worked.

The every-runner’s shoe

By 1985, Pegasus sales had reached 2.5 million pairs. Nike had found its lane and owned it. Longtime Nike designer Bob Lucas compared the shoe to an automotive staple: “To use an automotive analogy, auto manufacturers have their Pegasus in their lines: a Honda Civic, the Toyota Corolla. … that kind of product line where it’s a value-based proposition.”Over the next several years, Nike made only modest adjustments to the shoe — incremental material updates, seasonal color changes — while leaving its core intact. That restraint became part of the Pegasus’ identity. “I think everybody always knew it was one of those things where you didn’t want to change it,” said Clare Hamill, a leader at Nike Running in the mid-1980s. “That was the biggest challenge —&nbsp;how to make it better without changing it.”

At the heart of the early Pegasus was a simple principle: don’t complicate it. The midsole, upper and outsole were all guided by what Hamill described plainly. “The core philosophy of the Pegasus was, keep it simple. No junk. Give people what they need and don’t overbuild.”Runners felt that clarity. By the late 1980s, the Pegasus had become a dependable constant in an increasingly crowded running landscape, one defined less by flash than by trust. The 1989 Air Pegasus, built on existing tooling with a soft poly-pag and synthetic suede upper, would later be remembered as a high-water mark. “If you asked loyal Pegasus wearers through the years what their favorite version has been,” said former Nike Running leader Kevin Paulk, “I would be willing to bet a lot of people would say the Peg ’89. It had a nice soft upper and fit like a glove.”

From its earliest years, that has remained the draw of the Pegasus: a running shoe built not to chase trends but to earn loyalty, mile after mile.

The Peg wasn’t designed to be an icon. It was designed to solve a problem. See how that solution became "the single biggest and best running shoe in the world."

Nike Pegasus: The Origin of a Running Workhorse

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

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

A Catalyst for the Future

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

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

The Bridge to a Running Movement

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

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

Long Live Experimentation and Innovation

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

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

Department of Nike Archives

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

Feature

From Waffle Iron to World Stage: The True Story of the Nike Moon Shoe

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

The Handshake That Started It All

The Beginning

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

The Hamburger of Runners

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

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

From Track to Business

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

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

History

At the base of K2, the world’s second-highest peak, two American climbers sat among their gear, snow-streaked ridgelines rising behind them. Their faces were lean from 68 days on the mountain. Both wore yellow Nike Long Distance Vectors (LDVs) — one of the brand’s top long-distance running shoes at the time — which looked as battered as the climbers themselves. A picture was needed to mark the moment; one of the men raised a thumb toward the camera. The photograph, taken by mountaineering photographer Dianne Roberts in 1978, would go on to become one of Nike’s most unexpected origin stories.

An Unlikely Sponsorship

Months earlier, Nike had quietly supplied the expedition with those lightweight trainers, a last-minute gift meant for the 110-mile approach to basecamp. “A lot of it was off-trail,” recalled Rick Ridgeway, one of the climbers in the photo and a leading American alpinist of the era. “You can imagine they were pretty trashed by the time we got there.”In those years, most climbers relied on stiff leather boots built in Europe. The LDVs were the opposite: soft, breathable and fast. “They were just more flexible and more comfortable,” Ridgeway said. “What was really cool about those LDVs is that you need to hop around on rocks. This was a rough hike so you could boulder hop. They breathed better. They were functionally superior to the more rigid traditional trekking shoe.”

Internally, Nike referred to the model as the “Long Distance Vixie” because Eugene podiatrist Dennis Vixie made the last. Externally, it was known as the Long Distance Vector.At the time, Nike hadn’t yet stepped into the outdoor business — the shoes had simply been a goodwill gesture for the expedition. No one could have predicted that they would plant the seed for an entirely new category.

By the time the team descended, the fabric sneakers had nearly fallen apart. Ridgeway and Roskelley held them together with tape and glue for the long walk back to the roadhead. “Being up that high for that long without oxygen, it was hard,” Ridgeway remembered. “But we made it. And on the way out, we started talking about how the shoe could be modified to make it into a usable trekking shoe.”When they returned home, the climbers mailed their blown-out LDVs to Nike along with a short list of suggested improvements, including a tougher sole and more rugged upper, while still keeping the shoe lightweight and flexible. Those notes would help spark Nike’s first outdoor footwear line and, eventually, the category that became <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-reintroduces-acg-all-conditions-gear" target="_blank">All Conditions Gear</a> (ACG).

From Climb to Concept

Nike’s design team took the climbers’ feedback to heart. The field-worn LDVs had proven that lighter footwear could thrive where only heavy boots once ruled. The idea that “light is right” began to ripple through the brand’s ranks.By 1981, that thinking produced three shoes that merged the best of Nike running with durability for rough terrain: the Lava Dome, the Approach and the Magma. Nike’s first shoe to use a GORE-TEX lining; the design shape would later inform early thinking behind the Air Force 1. “It became very apparent that world-class athletes [were] going really lightweight,” recalled product manager Monte Mayko, who helped lead the project from Nike’s Exeter, New Hampshire factory. “It made total sense.”

Inspired by the K2 photograph and the climbers’ firsthand notes, the Nike team reimagined what a hiking shoe could be. The result was a category shift toward performance minimalism. “The whole notion of light is right and less is more and functional minimalism — climbers really get that at their core,” explained Kirk Richardson, a lifelong mountaineer who would later lead ACG. “Nike intuitively got it. Bowerman and Knight were absolutely right.” The new designs, built in Exeter and Saco, Maine, featured lightweight uppers, waffle soles and durable midsoles derived directly from Nike’s running heritage. For climbers and trail runners, they felt revolutionary: fast, flexible and protective enough to take the punishment of rock and scree. “Turning a training shoe into a trekking shoe. Nobody had done that,” Ridgeway later said. “It was kind of revolutionary.”

As those early designs hit the market, Ridgeway continued testing prototypes and corresponding with Nike designers. “They’d send me a prototype of the shoes to try out so I field tested them,” he recalled. One of those early ads — the first print campaign for Nike Outdoor — used Roberts’ K2 photograph of Ridgeway and Roskelley. The caption read: “Not everyone was willing to wait for our hiking boots."

The Big Ascent

By the mid-1980s, Nike’s outdoor experiments had evolved from one-off projects into a legitimate design philosophy. Yet without a unifying category, they remained scattered, a mix of hiking boots, trail runners and small-batch apparel experiments without a single name or purpose.That began to change in 1987 when a small internal team was tasked with formalizing Nike’s outdoor efforts. According to Tom Clarke, then vice president of product marketing, Nike had been talking about being in the outdoor business for some time and had a stable of avid outdoor people around product management.

The team saw an opening in a market dominated by European legacy brands still building heavy, rigid gear for mountaineering specialists. An opportunity to create athletic gear designed for movement in all conditions.Clarke, Richardson and a small team in Beaverton and Exeter began sketching out a strategy. Footwear and apparel would live under a single collection guided by four principles: high performance, durability, versatility and functional excellence. It was the beginning of a significant shift in performance outdoor footwear that would also make its way into apparel.The idea quickly gained traction. Within two years, a full outdoor business plan emerged.

The Name Takes Hold

Nike’s outdoor plan was coming together, but a fitting name was still missing. Around the same time, Nike Running had begun using the phrase “All Conditions Gear” for a small line of year-round performance apparel — gear designed to handle any weather. The overlap in philosophy caught the Outdoor team’s attention. When Clarke’s group discovered the term, they adopted it to define the new collection, a name that embodied Nike’s commitment to performance regardless of terrain or weather, echoing the same spirit that had driven Ridgeway and Roskelley’s K2 ascent a decade earlier.

By 1989, it became official. Under Richardson’s leadership, ACG launched as a fully integrated line of footwear and apparel designed for athletes who ran, hiked, climbed and explored outdoors.Nike made sure its debut felt authentic. The first catalog shoot took place at Castleton Tower in Moab, Utah, a notorious rock spire revered by climbers. “We wanted to position it as a pretty real brand,” said art director Ron Dumas. “We had these guys climb this tower and so we got in a helicopter. It was just about sunset and I was sitting on the rail holding onto the photographer and he’s hanging out of the helicopter. The tower was beautiful and these guys are just little dots on top. It was phenomenal.”

Released in 1989 as part of ACG’s inaugural product launch, the Huascaran jacket featured a nylon microfiber GORE-TEX shell.

Inspired by Mount Huascarán in Peru, its design included underarm gussets, double storm flaps, cargo pockets and a zip-in liner capability, reflecting ACG’s early focus on durable, all-conditions performance.

Additionally, the warm winter jacket was constructed with a Regulator-lined interior and a snap-off hood.

A decade after the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, Nike ACG marked the mountain’s irreversible transformation with a before-and-after patch showing a landscape changed forever. Instead of measuring height like other ACG “landmark” pieces, the jacket captured impact, memory and permanence.

Built as an insulation layer within ACG’s late-’80s systems approach, the Mount St. Helens Jacket used thick Polarfleece, ribbed cuffs and a reversible YKK zip to integrate seamlessly with outer shells. Technical and modular by design, it showed how storytelling and function came together in early ACG systems thinking.

This Kilimanjaro Anorak K2 was worn and autographed by climber John Roskelley, one of the two Americans photographed at K2 basecamp in LDVs whose trek later appeared in an early 1980s poster and in a 1989 ACG ad.

Built with two- and three-layer GORE-TEX and a nylon microfiber shell, the anorak included reinforced yokes, underarm gussets and multiple zip pockets, reflecting the technical design ethos that shaped ACG’s early years.

When the first ACG collection dropped that fall, anchored by the Air Wildwood, Lava High and a series of Gore-Tex and fleece outerwear pieces, Nike had officially staked its flag in the outdoor market.

The photograph of two climbers at the base of K2 had become something larger: the spark that ignited an entirely new dimension for Nike.

The wild moment that sparked Nike’s first outdoor footwear line and, eventually, the category that became All Conditions Gear.

The Birth of ACG: The Summit that Launched a Legacy

Virgil Abloh’s relationship to Nike began long before he first visited the company’s world headquarters in October 2016 to start a new collaboration. As a teenager, living in Rockford, Illinois, he and his friends sketched shoe ideas and mailed them to Nike. “We were enamored with Air Jordans,” said Abloh in 2017. “Michael Jordan was larger than life — he was Superman to me. My entire design background and ethos came from the ‘90s.”Abloh took his early design education — drawn from athletic footwear, hip-hop and rock album covers and graffiti, he says — and merged it with formal training in architecture and engineering. After becoming a successful creative director, DJ, designer and founder of the brand, OFF-WHITE, Abloh blurred the lines of various creative processes, rewriting the rules of fashion and design and injecting humor and DIY elements into his practice.“By the time I made my first trip to Beaverton, I immediately wanted to make something,” Abloh said. “I didn't wait all those years just to have&nbsp;meetings&nbsp;at Nike.” During the first visit, he rebuilt a pair of triple-black Air Force 1 Low shoes using an X-ACTO knife and drew on them with markers, initiating one-offs for his staff to wear at that December’s Design Miami/, where he presented OFF-WHITE furniture.

This exercise became a quick turn of 12 Air Force 1s, all handmade by Matt Kilgore at Nike’s Blue Ribbon Studios. Abloh wanted the tongue’s inner foam exposed, a silver Swoosh with thick, obvious stitching and text nodding to the shoe’s origins in Beaverton, Oregon.Establishing this reconstructed design language, combined with Abloh’s urgency to fulfill a life-long dream, would ultimately lead to The Ten, a collaborative exploration of 10 Nike footwear silhouettes.“What we're talking about here is larger than sneakers, it’s larger than design culture,” says Abloh. “It’s nothing short of state-of-the-art design. These 10 shoes have broken barriers in performance and style. To me, they are on the same level as a sculpture of David or the&nbsp;Mona Lisa. You can debate it all you want, but they mean something. And that's what's important.”The 10 shoes were divided into two themes. The first, “REVEALING,” was designed to look accessible: hand-cut, open-source and reconstructed. It includes the Air Jordan I, Nike Air Max 90, Nike Air Presto, Nike Air VaporMax and Nike Blazer Mid.The second, “GHOSTING,” was designed with translucent uppers to further the idea of revealing and unite the second set of silhouettes through common material. It includes the Converse Chuck Taylor, Nike Zoom Fly SP, Nike Air Force 1 Low, Nike React Hyperdunk 2017 and Nike Air Max 97.

“Revealing”

Abloh’s quick pace was an ideal match for a rapid Nike Direct timeline, resulting in one of the fastest collaborations Nike has ever completed: 10 shoes in about 10 months from ideation to release. The project officially began with the task of re-imagining five Nike footwear icons — the Air Jordan I, Air Max 90, Air Presto, Nike Air VaporMax and Blazer Mid — within a breakneck schedule. “Most of the creative decisions were made in the first three hours, while actual design and iteration took two to three days,” recalled Abloh. “The Jordan I was done in one design session. I work in a very like dream-like state. I see it, and it's done.”Like with the initial Air Force 1 exercise, the X-ACTO knife was central to this design process. Abloh used it to reveal the foam within each shoes’ respective tongues (and move their Nike labels), move the Swoosh placements (and, at times, enlarge them) and add pops of color through orange tabs (in various locations per shoe).The “REVEALING” aspect of this series was also satisfied through tongue-in-cheek text placements, such as “AIR” on the lateral side of the Nike Air VaporMax, Air Jordan I and Air Presto (referring to Nike Air technology) and “SHOELACES” on the shoe strings.

Though the designs look complex, Abloh said he truly wanted this process — opening up the figurative guts of a shoe to reveal the innovation within — to feel approachable. “Yes, we're making a desired product, but by making a trip to your local store, and using tools you have at home,&nbsp;you could also make this shoe,” said Abloh.This approach articulates a Just Do It mentality — one rooted in working hard to realize one’s own potential. “I spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about the kid in the middle of nowhere who has a passion for design, much like I did,” Abloh said. “He or she needs a path like this to&nbsp;understand&nbsp;design.”

“Ghosting”

Abloh’s work on the Nike Air VaporMax, within the “REVEALING” set, presented an exciting challenge, because, at the time, the shoe hadn’t been released yet. Two more unreleased silhouettes, the Nike Zoom Fly SP and Nike React Hyperdunk 2017, were similarly stimulating in their newness and potential. Abloh was inspired by the cutting-edge cushioning innovations of Breaking2’s Nike Zoom Vaporfly Elite&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://store.nike.com/us/en_us/pw/running-shoes/8yzZoi3" target="null">running shoe</a>&nbsp;and basketball’s React Hyperdunk 2017, and decided to introduce an evolution of the reveal called “GHOSTING” using translucent uppers. With these five shoes, including basketball icons that preceded the Hyperdunk (the Converse Chuck Taylor and Nike Air Force 1 Low), and a running icon that preceded the Vaporfly Elite (the Nike Air Max 97), Abloh said he wanted to use a common, semi-revealing material to unite their combined 94-year history.

“My high school years were made up of playing soccer, skateboarding and biking year-round,” said Abloh. “What I've learned from playing sports and also being obsessed with design is that there is an inherent style and focus that exists amongst athletes and designers alike: What propels them to be the best comes from deep within.”The open-source nature of The Ten, through a reconstruction of footwear released by Converse, Inc. since 1923, and Nike, Inc. from 1972 to the present, spoke to the true longevity of shoes that have defined sport and sneaker culture. They’ve stood the test of time, and through The Ten, have become collective catalysts from which to understand not just footwear design, but all design.“In one gesture, I wanted to underscore how the design system and manufacturing of Nike are so perfect,” said Abloh. “By combining these shoes with design that amplifies their ‘handmade’ quality, we’re intensifying the human element and expanding the emotional connection of these 10 icons.”

Abloh's singular design language, combined with his urgency to fulfill a life-long dream, would ultimately lead to The Ten, a collaborative exploration of 10 Nike footwear silhouettes.

Icons

The History of Virgil Abloh's “The Ten”

In 1971, Watergate was just a hotel, NASA was preparing Apollo 15, and a small Oregon company had just sold its first pair of shoes.The shoe — a football boot called “the Nike” — retailed for $16.95. Its defining feature was a checkmark-shaped stripe created by a Portland State University student for $35. Few noticed the shoe, but the mark would long outlast it.At the time, Nike wasn’t yet the global sports brand it would become. Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman were still operating as Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS), a small distributor of Japanese running shoes. But contracts with their supplier were winding down, and Knight knew the company’s future depended on more than someone else’s product. To succeed, BRS needed a shoe of its own — and with it, an identity.That February, Knight contracted a factory in Mexico to produce a black soccer cleat with a white sole. To distinguish it from Onitsuka Tiger models, he needed a brand mark. He turned to Carolyn Davidson, a design student he’d met while teaching accounting at Portland State.

Two years earlier, Davidson had been overheard in a hallway telling a classmate she couldn’t afford an oil painting course. Knight offered her $2 an hour to make charts and graphics for his side business. Over time, she created ads, brochures and catalogs. Now he asked her for something bigger: a stripe for the side of a shoe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Nike Swoosh Logo: From Humble Beginnings to Global Icon

When he debuted the Kobe 3 in 2007, Kobe Bryant subverted expectations, just as expected. The Lakers played an away game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on December 20, days before the signature players from other brands would reveal their holiday colorways, alight in wintery themes. His Kobe 3: Black. No nonsense.&nbsp;That legacy of stealthy, unsung precursor defines the Kobe 3. It preceded arguably the most influential lowtop in basketball history. It preceded what became Nike Basketball’s “Signature Shoe” in the Hyperdunk, which would debut in the summer of ‘08. And yet, the 3 is immovable in Kobe’s footwear legacy. He wore it for his decisive MVP campaign in the ’07-’08 season. And, talk to any Kobe fan: it’s a cult favorite, raising basketball shoe design to an elevated art form.

<h3>How We Made It</h3>Before the Kobe 3, the Kobe 2 sought to be the most technically advanced footwear in basketball. But its overt technology — modeled after the functionality of Nike Free and barefoot movement — emphasized a kind of science as its aesthetic. Nike Basketball Creative Director Eric Avar, who took back the reigns of the Kobe line with the 3, wanted to fuse performance and artistry into the design of the Kobe 3.“Kobe was probably one of, if not the most progressive players I ever worked with in terms of wanting to push performance technology in design,” says Avar.&nbsp;

But the shoe wasn’t love at first sight. Even Kobe knew the shoe’s design would be polarizing.“When people first saw the shoe, they were like, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know,” Kobe would remark with a laugh.&nbsp;The Kobe 3 released to the public in 2008 in the Orca colorway. Across the mid top's upper was an all-over pattern of striped TPU caging made to resemble basketball netting. The forefoot and heel Zoom units were bridged by a carbon fiber shank, which helped the shoe maintain its torsional rigidity during sharp movements. The midsole featured Lunarlon Cushioning, a first for the Kobe line. On the outsole tread, the traction pattern was arranged in diamond shapes, inspired by the middle name, Diamante, of Kobe’s daughter Natalia.&nbsp;

<h3>How It Took Off</h3>Kobe Bryant wore the Kobe 3 en route to his MVP award in 2008. In the postseason, he’d lead the Lakers to the NBA Finals, where they fell just short of an NBA title. The season might not have been Bryant’s best statistically, but it was arguably the height of his presence across basketball. He was everywhere in 2008. MVP. First-Team All League. First-Team All League Defense. Co-Captain of Team USA’s Redeem Team. He put together all of the pieces of his game, meanwhile directing his teams as the undisputed Alpha leader.As the releases continued, the shoe took on more expressive looks, thanks to the shoe’s upper design being conducive to an imaginative palette. Christmas Day against the Phoenix Suns featured an unmistakable yellow and purple combination. In the ‘08 All-Star Game, though he only played a few minutes because of a torn ligament in his pinky (Of course he played), he laced up a deep red and gold colorway. In 2013, the Kobe 3 was re-released as part of Nike’s Prelude Pack in the Kobe line. While seven of the shoes were based off of his career milestones, only one shoe was inspired by a setback: the Kobe 3. The black colorway was covered by a custom fresco-style graphic, inspired by the swirling psychological torment that Kobe felt upon losing the 2008 NBA Finals.&nbsp;

<h3>What’s Next</h3>The Kobe 3 is <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/kobe-3-protro-halo-official-images" target="_blank">the latest model to receive the Protro treatment</a>. The upper now has a mesh backing against the TPU netting to provide greater support. The midsole features a full-length Zoom Strobel. The traction has been retooled. Even the tongue was revamped to be more comfortable. No feature was ignored for a modern tech upgrade. It’s maybe the most expansive Protro to date.“We were always pushing the limits of Kobe’s shoe to be faster, more precise and to be modern,” says Avar. “Kobe was big on being bold, aggressive, provocative and making an impact. Working together, we were on a never-ending quest for the perfect shoe from him.”

A legacy as stealthy, unsung precursor defines the Kobe III. And yet, it's immovable in Kobe’s footwear legacy.

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Words: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/rachel-cavanaugh-contributing-writer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Rachel Cavanaugh</a> Portraits: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/company/people/vivian-kim-contributing-photographer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Vivian Kim</a>When Maria Sharapova stepped onto the court at the 2006 US Open wearing a little black dress that shimmered under the lights, it was a moment tennis had never seen before.Trimmed with crystals and tailored with precision, the Nike ensemble merged sport and fashion in a way that hadn’t been done on that stage, at that level — bold, unapologetic and impossible to ignore. The dress wasn’t just a look. It was a statement.Designed by Martin Lotti, Nike’s then global creative director for women’s training, “The Dress” quickly became a cultural flashpoint: proof that performance wear could carry elegance and personality without sacrificing function.

“At the time, sport and fashion weren’t as intertwined as they are today,” Lotti recalls. “That blending of worlds was still very new. That dress helped establish a new intersection, one that now defines the modern landscape of tennis apparel. I like to call it ‘unexpected performance.’ It looked like a dress but it was built to perform at the highest level. The message: You don’t have to compromise style to achieve performance.”Now, nearly 20 years later, Sharapova is returning to the court in another black dress, this time as an inductee into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Once again, Nike is dressing her for the moment.

“It’s a full-circle moment not just for me personally but for Nike,” Lotti says. “To be part of her journey from that win to her induction into the Hall of Fame, it’s incredible.”To celebrate a partnership that has spanned nearly two decades, Lotti — now Nike’s Chief Design Officer — and his team have reimagined the original dress for the occasion. The most iconic details remain —the rounded neckline, the striking black silhouette, the subtle shimmer —&nbsp;but this version has been refined with a longer hemline and pleated skirt to suit the tone of the evening.The new look also includes a series of personal touches: five stars etched into the dress to represent Maria’s Grand Slam titles; a sleek, tailored jacket fastened with a custom button computationally designed from an algorithm based on her son’s birthday; a modernized metallic hairpiece;&nbsp;a wraparound Swoosh bracelet;&nbsp;and a custom expression of Nike’s Shox Z, a new sportswear silhouette launching later this year.

Together, the pieces form a head-to-toe look rooted in legacy, honoring where the tennis legend has been while reflecting who she is today.“We wanted to make that little black dress again, the same one people remembered but elevated for what this occasion means,” Lotti explains. “She’s not here to compete but to be celebrated. So we evolved it. We made it a bit more formal, a bit more reflective. We kept the soul of the original but designed it for now.”

That soul —&nbsp;a balance of performance, style and story — has always been at the center of Nike’s partnership with Sharapova, who explains that seeing the new design brought back memories of the original and everything that came along with it.&nbsp;“It was such a pivotal moment,” Maria says. “I remember the first time that I tried the dress. It felt so special. It was something I felt truly confident in. I could move freely and it was like an extension of my style, but it served a very athletic purpose. I could do all the movements that it required me to do but yet I felt very elegant and strong.”That duality, elegance alongside strength, continues to define Sharapova’s signature style today. As an athlete, business owner, and mother, she tends to gravitate toward timeless pieces that blend confidence, comfort and purpose.“I still wear pieces that I’ve had for years,” she says. “I think there's something beautiful about having that special sweater or special dress that you just know will make you feel like who you are. It’s a part of your identity. This black dress is very much like that.”

She remembers how, at the time, yes, the dress did more than turn turned heads, but it also. It challenged expectations —&nbsp;not only of what athletes could wear and but how they could show up on the court. Lotti agrees, noting that it was a bold step into uncharted territory.“Playing in that dress, Maria was powerful and graceful,” he says. “It broke stereotypes, showing that. You didn’t have to be just one thing. You could be both.”

And that’s when Nike is at its best, Lotti says — when it challenges the status quo. “The best projects are the ones where we’re trying something new. Something that’s never been done,” he says. “That’s when Nike reinvents itself, pushes the athlete and pushes sport forward.”Ultimately, the dress, both then and now, stands as a testament to the brand’s enduring relationship&nbsp;—&nbsp;with Sharapova and with all of its athletes.&nbsp;“We say our athletes are family,” Lotti says. “And this is what that means. Their dreams become our dreams. We’re there for the highs and the lows. We’re there when no one’s watching and we’re there when the whole world is.”

In 2006, Maria Sharapova wore a bespoke Nike LBD on the court that proved you don't have to sacrifice style for performance. To celebrate her 2025 induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, we made her a new one.

Making It

The Legacy of Maria Sharapova’s Little Black Tennis Dress

For almost 50 years, Nike’s made magic by taking the most basic of elements — air — and optimizing it to help athletes perform at their peak. Now, the company’s hit a new milestone in innovation, this time in materials: Nike Radical AirFlow, debuted in this summer’s trail running season. Building on its rich legacy in performance apparel, Nike scientists, designers and developers asked how they could create apparel that harnesses air around a runner in motion to help keep them cool.&nbsp;Trail running is one of the most extreme sports in which to test the efficacy of performance apparel. The tests of the sport are nearly unclassifiable. Trail running races can span one-kilometer vertical climbs to multi-day staged events across inhospitable conditions. Case in point: the iconic 100-mile race based in California’s Sierra Nevadas frequently reaches temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, while runners are surmounting altitude changes of more than 18,000 feet of elevation gain and 23,000 feet of elevation loss in the race. High heat and humidity not only hinder an athlete’s performance, but raise the risk of injury or even illness.&nbsp;Trail athletes are familiar with this arena of extremes, and to keep a competitive edge, they’ve developed their own hacks to stay cool. Draping ice-cold towels across their necks. Lying down in a stream or lake, mid-course, like a child in a backyard pool. Even shedding layers along the course.

But what if the make of the apparel itself could be part of the solution? Cross-disciplinary teams at Nike, many of whom are trail runners themselves, explored the question, setting out to create garments that could help the body maximize its natural cooling mechanisms.&nbsp;“An athlete’s sweat evaporation plays a significant role in helping cool the body,” says Jahan Behbahany, Senior Director, Nike Apparel Innovation. “We were interested in a material that could accelerate the velocity of airflow to skin and help speed up that evaporative cooling process. We knew we had the people, the tools and the resources to develop it.”

The solution would be far from Nike’s first success in maximizing airflow for athletes. The company’s intensive study of the aerodynamics of pacing helped lead to two of the most influential running record attempts of the last decade: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/inside-look-at-nike-breaking2-project" target="_blank">Eliud Kipchoge’s historic marathon quests</a> in 2017 and 2019, and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/topics/breaking4" target="_blank">Faith Kipyegon’s inspiring attempt</a> to run a four-minute mile. In performance apparel, Nike athletes and coaches have iterated on all-over mesh materials to promote airflow in hot conditions, from Nike Stand-Off to Nike Dri-Fit. Nike scientists, designers and developers carry deep knowledge of how apparel can be the great separator for athletes reaching their potential. Understanding the extreme conditions in which trail athletes compete, they knew they needed to find a new solution to help promote airflow against the body.After re-thinking traditional mesh and ventilation options, the team hypothesized that engineered airducts throughout the garment could capture air, speed it up and funnel it through the garment’s holes toward the skin. As the athlete runs forward, the material would accelerate the velocity of the airflow to the skin and help promote evaporative cooling. In other words, speed up your body’s natural sweat evaporation.Nike’s cross-disciplinary teams were focused on creating a breathable material that would allow for ideal construction of the airducts while ensuring maximum comfort and minimal distractions. The teams were inspired by the Bernoulli Principle of fluid dynamics, specifically the&nbsp;Venturi Effect — When a fluid flows through a constricted section of pipe, it sees an increase in velocity and a drop in pressure. Every element from material selection to the engineered knit construction was considered, studied and tested to promote and increase airflow to the skin.

Radical AirFlow

The new material is an engineered knit with hydrophilic chemistry to help manage moisture and enhance the sensation of airflow. The airducts accelerate airflow from the front of the material towards the skin. Nike researchers discovered that placing a series of “dimples” on the back side of the garment (skin-facing side) to complement each airduct improved the duration of the circulation at the skin level.“We tried all kinds of airduct configurations, sizes and zonal placements throughout the testing and development,” says Behbahany. “We found that a funnel-shaped construction of larger to smaller gradient holes, uniformly placed, would best ‘funnel’ and accelerate air to the skin.”When considering the garment in which to house the material, the team chose a long-sleeve top to cover as much of the body’s surface area as possible, and promote as much airflow as possible across the body. To help ensure comfort while runners spent hours on the trail, designers left large cut-outs under the arms to offer mobility and reduce weight, with construction and trims to help reduce chafing in high-friction and high-sweat areas.

With airducts zonally placed throughout the garments, larger ventilation at the under and arm bend were added to maximize mobility and airflow, and to help reduce the risk of chafing.

The top features a cropped hem to help minimize garment weight, allow for greater air through the lower abdomen, and allow easy access to the waist belt.

The teams were committed to testing the new material rigorously over two years, both in the field and in controlled research settings. They brought prototypes to Northern California for&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-acg-all-conditions-racing-department" target="null">All Conditions Racing Department athletes</a>&nbsp;to put through the region’s extreme conditions and give their feedback. The runners were floored by how cool and breathable the garment was, telling the teams that it gave a cool, breezy sensation against their skin unlike any top they’d ever worn. Back at the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) at Nike World Headquarters, Nike used its in-house climate chambers to observe how the material performed in controlled, yet grueling settings. All Conditions Racing Department athletes would filter through the NSRL to test out the prototypes. The parameters for testing simulated the kinds of dramatic temperature climbs that trail runners face at notoriously hot races.&nbsp;In the NSRL, athletes tested lightweight DriFit and Radical AirFlow garments in environmental climate chamber simulations to assess how Radical AirFlow compared against Nike’s tried and true material technology. From these tests, Nike scientists learned that when compared to DriFit, Radical AirFlow prototypes absorbed and retained 50% less sweat after prolonged running in the heat. Additional testing on&nbsp;thermal manikins&nbsp;showed that the prototypes were substantially more breathable and 25% less resistant to the evaporation of sweat, when compared to DriFit.

As one of the largest field test initiatives in Nike Running history, members of the All Conditions Racing Department will continue to test the prototype throughout the 2025 elite season. Nike designers, for their part, will continue to track feedback from in-race and lab testing to refine the garment as it readies for a 2026 retail launch.&nbsp;The opportunity to develop materials that harness airflow across the body will only grow more salient as global temperatures rise, and across different sports, not just on the trail. Mastering air, in all its forms, has been a fixture in Nike’s product history since the inception of the first Air Bag. Which makes the future of Radical AirFlow so bright.&nbsp;“We can’t wait to apply what we’re learning with our ACRD athletes to how we solve athlete problems in other sports,” says Behbahany. “Our investment for finding what’s next in this kind of apparel innovation is unmatched. Between our athletes, our innovators and our resources, we’re finding new cooling solutions for athletes to perform at their best, whatever their sport and wherever they play it.”

Nike Radical AirFlow Slow Motion Hero

The material innovation harnesses the power of the air moving around you to help maximize your body’s natural cooling mechanisms.

Nike Radical AirFlow Debuts a New Era of Breathable Apparel

While most of us got through middle school trying to blend in, Jane Hedengren remembers wanting to leave her mark: Breaking her school’s record in the mile. She was 12 years old, new to organized track, and intent on sealing the record by the end of the school year. Her father John took her to a college track on a cold fall afternoon for 400-meter repeats to test her capacity. She was trying and failing to hit her splits. That’s when John, a former runner at Brigham Young University (BYU), joined her for the workout, cutting through the chilly, high desert air, pulling up the pace but staying near enough to encourage Jane as she willed herself forward. She’d eventually hit those splits, and she’d later break her school’s record that spring.&nbsp;Now out of high school, Jane Hedengren has established herself as one of the most accomplished amateur distance runners in American history. She arguably had the most dominant high school season ever in 2024, male or female, breaking nine high school records spanning the mile to the 5K. She’d be the first to say that she hasn’t accomplished these feats alone.&nbsp;Along with her family’s support, Jane’s teammates include those coaches and runners from the Nike Elite Program, which invites 40 of the nation’s top runners to experience the comprehensive training tools provided by Nike coaches all year long, culminating in some of the nation’s preeminent meets during the cross-country, indoor and outdoor seasons. All seasons in which Jane dominated.Here, in her own words, she speaks to how that support has set her up for a professional running future — and starting her own collegiate running career at BYU in the fall.

The indoor and outdoor seasons give you many opportunities to prove yourself. Nike Indoor Nationals this year was special, because I was able to run the 5k for the first time on the track. I had to put myself out there.Good coaches can turn a phrase and get you motivated. During that Nike Indoor Nationals meet, one of my coaches from the Nike Elite program, Juli Benson, told me, “I know you’re in a good spot. Let’s see if you’re in a great spot.” Then it was like the lesson my dad taught me: You’ll see once you’re in that last 2K of the race. I was able to close out hard. A lot of good stuff can come from having an open mind and getting the most out of yourself.&nbsp;This year was a season of firsts. Last fall was my first time at <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/nike-cross-nationals-2024-official-images" target="null">Nike Cross Nationals</a>. It was really exciting to feel as fresh as I did on race day. The field was strong, so I wanted to stay patient, because the course with the weather conditions can be unforgiving. I kept steady early on and maintained my pace. It’s special to finish a race and not expect that level of performance out of yourself.

I love how running has different disciplines within it. Cross country and track are special in their own right, and they’re so different. I love how the competition of cross country takes place in this long, tough terrain. It embodies what running is all about: Being out in nature, competing with other runners. Track is really fun for me. It’s a bit quicker, and competition also plays a role, but there’s a certain thing to be said about trying to hit certain times. You’re also able to use a variety of distances as a guardrail to monitor how you’re feeling.&nbsp;Your performances aren’t the only part of your racing that evolves. Your training changes, too. Strength training has been a big part of my development process. Early on, I was running around 30 miles a week, doing some light workouts here and there with some cross training. As the years have gone on, I’ve upped the intensity and volume. This last season, I was doing up to 55 miles a week while doing more intense workouts and feeling good and strong. I think I realized I had a talent probably right around my sophomore year of high school. I had been working and staying more consistent. Plus, no matter how I performed, I always had a love for running. I loved the freedom it afforded me. I could get away from my life’s stresses and have this thing I could work toward and use to discover more about myself. That happened as soon as I started running, and it’s evolved as I’ve gotten older and have been more in touch with the sport.&nbsp;

You can always find a new challenge to overcome as you get older. I’m really excited for this next chapter with BYU. I’m open to trying new distances, racing against different competition. I want to try it all. It’s great that college isn’t just a one-off experience. You learn these lessons over time. I'll have time to get a hold of things, find my rhythm and routine, get to know my teammates, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/women-running-culture-mumbai-india-nike-after-dark-tour" target="null">Coach Diljeet Taylor</a> and the other staff.&nbsp;I’ve been really careful about thinking too far ahead. People will ask me about aspirations like medaling in the Olympics or finding a prominence on the world stage. Those goals are incredible, obviously, and I’m working toward them, but the truth is, I don’t know where I’ll be in a few years. What I can focus on right now is keeping myself healthy, enjoying the sport and loving those around me.&nbsp;I’m taking things one step at a time.&nbsp;

Proving her talent across Nike’s cross country, indoor and outdoor championships, Hedengren finished her high school career as one of the most accomplished middle- and long-distance runners of all time.

How I Got Here

Indoors and Out, Runner Jane Hedengren is Rewriting History

On a late July afternoon, while his three-year-old twins were napping, American shotputter Joe Kovacs went to the basement of his home in Dublin, Ohio. He was bored, so he figured he’d get in some light training. He loaded 540 pounds on his barbell and benched it for a breezy double, no music, with the U.S. Open playing on his television in the background.You could easily assume that this casual power is what makes Kovacs so accomplished in the shotput. He’s won the world championships twice, he was the Olympic silver medalist in 2016, and his outdoor PB of 23.23 m (76 ft 2 1/2 in) is the second farthest throw of all time. But a shotputter has ideal biomechanical proportions, and at a height of 6 feet, Kovac’s strength is a requirement to stay at the top of his event.&nbsp;“I need to stay strong and powerful, because the shorter you are, the less you can use your body’s levers to your advantage,” says Kovacs. “Some guys in the Diamond League roster are 5, 6 inches taller than I am. They can generate velocity through their levers in ways that I can’t.”&nbsp;Plus, all that brute strength is simply the end note to the most important facet of his technique. “Velocity is what makes the difference in a big throw — strength plus speed. That combination starts with your footwork,” he says.&nbsp;Here, Kovacs calls out the essential elements for a winning throw. Look for them when he steps into the shotput ring this weekend in Silesia.

The ShoesA shotputter’s real estate is small: a circle just seven feet in diameter. Feel is everything in a performance zone this tight. That’s why footwear is an uncompromising part of a thrower’s toolkit.&nbsp;Kovacs, along with many other pro shotputters, opt for the Nike Zoom SD. The no-sew upper conforms to the foot,&nbsp;the Flywire cables help keep his center of gravity over the footbed as he’s generating immense force on the spin, and the textured outsole offers him more ground feel as he’s traveling across the circle. This season, Kovacs has been testing a new version of the SD currently under development, which includes a carbon fiber plate. He laced them up out of the box during this year’s Pre Classic in July, took his practice throws, and promptly delivered one of the best throws in the world this year, a 22.48 meter heave.“It gives that diving board affect, but because it’s so thin, I can still feel all the textures of the circle,” he says. “Shotputters are ultimately trying to sprint from one end of the circle to the other. If your feet aren’t locked into the ground, you leak the energy you could be channeling into your throw.”

The SpinThe first bit of wisdom Kovacs received as a young thrower came from American shotputter Reese Hoffa, another Olympic medalist and former world champion, during a high school camp in Pennsylvania. Don’t do the glide, said Hoffa — a technique where the thrower moves linearly across the circle, without rotating. He told Kovacs he could generate more velocity by trying the spin instead, an unusual recommendation for a young thrower. Out of principle, almost all high school throwers learn the glide first, as it doesn’t require the coordination of the spin.The result: Kovacs creates an insane level of speed as he exits the spin and launches the shotput off his neck. He suggests fans to look for speed across the circle as the separating variable between a good throw and a great throw, no matter how massive an athlete looks.

The SignalsOne of the best parts about track and field, Kovacs says, is the unbiased measurement of an athlete’s performance. It’s the stopwatch and the measuring tape that determine the winner. That said, there are subtler cues that can tip a viewer off to whether a throw has something special. Listen for the sounds of a thrower’s ground contact across the circle, their shoes scraping the surface. More ground contact usually means a good throw. (Notice a theme? It all goes back to footwork).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Another cue to watch: the level of spin on the shotput as it soars through the air. If it’s spinning, it means the thrower didn’t get all of their force behind it. Kovacs uses a cueball in pool as an example. A weaker shot is one that’s wobbling and spinning after contact with the pool cue. Sometimes, in practice, Kovacs will write his name on the shotput in permanent marker so that the spin is legible to him and his team.“My whole career has been one big experiment in combining all these elements of a throw. It becomes this puzzle, or a game, something you’re always trying to perfect. What if I try this? What if I change this? Those decisions involve all these different facets, from strength, to timing, to technique. For me, that experimenting will never stop being fun.”

The two-time world champion gives some advice on how to watch the shotput. Spoiler: It’s not all about strength.

Fan 101

Joe Kovacs on What It Takes to Throw A Winning Shotput

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

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

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

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

Allisha Gray is Leveling Up Her Game — All of It

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

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

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

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

The Legacy of Maria Sharapova’s Little Black Tennis Dress

Nike Radical AirFlow Debuts a New Era of Breathable Apparel

Indoors and Out, Runner Jane Hedengren is Rewriting History

Joe Kovacs on What It Takes to Throw A Winning Shotput

Allisha Gray is Leveling Up Her Game — All of It

5 Questions With K-Pop Star KARINA

Incredible Scenes from the 50th Anniversary of the Pre Classic

Inside the World’s Fastest Mile Race

What It Takes to Capture a Photo Finish

Behind the Scenes of Faith Kipyegon's Breaking4 Attempt Day

The Breaking4 Journey: Faith Kipyegon and Nike’s Unforgettable Project

Faith Kipyegon and Her Breaking4 Pacers Minutes Before History