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

Nike Running

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.

Nike Basketball

Journey of an Icon: 20 Years of LeBron James in China

Hours of powering up steep ascents and navigating gnarly descents. Whipping mountain winds, glaring direct sun and biting evening temps. Getting mentally right with the fact that the next aid station is far, far away. Ultra trail running can sound like a 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

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

Rachel Cavanaugh

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

Cameron Strand

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

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

The Road to Chicago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pursuit of Lighter

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

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

Knowing the Athlete

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

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

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

Feature

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

About Nike - Stories from Inside NIKE, Inc.

From the tangerine-tinted break of dawn to lychee red sunsets, the technicolor streets of Shanghai are inundated with runners. The sheer number in the Enchanted City and across Greater China has not only boomed — it’s evolved. More and more runners have morphed into distance racers regularly ripping through finish lines 26.2 miles at a time. “Nearly every day there is a different marathon,” says Jean Peng, Principal Product Engineer, who is based at Nike’s world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, and regularly visits its Shanghai headquarters for product development. “The runner has become the marathon runner.”The numbers bear that out. According to the Chinese Athletics Association, in 2014, China hosted 51 official marathons; that number jumped to 749 marathons in 2024, with more than 7 million participants.&nbsp;This reflects a larger global trend: Worldwide, marathon participation is up 18 percent in the past year. From Chicago to Shanghai, nearly twice as many marathoners will toe the starting line in 2026 compared to just five years ago, many for the first time, and almost all with the same goal: to finish.

At Nike, decades of sport science research have gone into propelling the top performers on race day. Elite racers like Eliud Kipchoge have sent the term “super shoe” into the modern cultural zeitgeist, attacking and breaking the 2-hour marathon mark with the help of models like the Nike ZoomX Vaporfly 4% and Alphafly prototypes.&nbsp;While the seven-star finisher strikes the pavement from his toes with the grace of a gazelle and the accolades of a GOAT, Kipchoge exists in extremely rarefied air as a racer who can complete a marathon in 2 hours and some 28,000 steps. The exploding space of road racing includes more than 30 million athletes whose average marathon time is 4.5 hours. Unlike Kipchoge, this marathoner takes roughly 55,000 steps to cover 26.2 miles. And, according to insights Nike’s gathered from participants across the globe, many feel that super shoes — designed to amplify a forefoot strike — can feel too torqued to control, and even look more aggressive than these athletes believe they’re ready for.“Their requirements are much different,” says Peng of the general marathon racer. This runner wants stability, durability and a shoe that delivers performance benefits but also feels accessible, from looks to cost, he explains. Drawing on feedback from Greater China marathoners, the Nike Running team had an opportunity: “We set out to create an inclusive marathon racer with similar performance to our elite super shoes, and at half the price.”

Introducing Swooshfly

When Running Product Line Manager Ryan Shi was briefed on the need to create a super shoe built for twice the steps at half the cost, he responded bluntly. “No way,” said Shi, intimately understanding the daunting math-meets-design equation he faced. For more than a decade, Shi has helped work on the industry-defining race-day footwear made with runners like Kipchoge in mind. In that time, he often heard insights from gen-pop marathoners that, without deep experience wearing a super shoe, “it can feel like the shoe is driving you.” It was clear there was a need for a more approachable model that could stand up to twice the hours of pavement pounding. But how do you get more for less? The answer was to rethink everything, says Shi. “<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-swooshfly-makes-race-day-feel-more-possible" target="_blank">The Nike Swooshfly</a> is an innovation for the runner who wants the momentum to finish a marathon,” he says. “Everything is new.”&nbsp; That newness starts at the core of a super shoe: the carbon fiber plate.

Nike super shoe models like the Alphafly and Vaporfly have eight layers of carbon fiber to create a stiff, propelling plate. With the Swooshfly, Shi and team performed repeated tests in the Shanghai Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) to see how far they could reduce the number of carbon fiber layers to create more flexibility and stability, but still maintain the amount of stiff spring to propel you forward. Five layers of carbon fiber was the magic number that wear-testers said was the perfect balance of push without sacrificing control. The upshot: This less-is-more benefit also created material savings. Next up, the shoe’s last — a foot-shaped form that designers use to create every component of a shoe, from the midsole to the upper. Swooshfly broke the mold and has an entirely new last, with a wider midfoot and lower arch to address athlete feedback that racing shoes can feel too narrow and cause arch irritation. In testing, Shi found that the wider last not only made the Swooshfly fit true to size, the shoe’s stability improved too.&nbsp;

Then there’s the foam. The Swooshfly debuts a breakthrough: Nike SkyX, a new beaded-foam compound created for the long-lasting energy return that everyday marathoners need.“Nike SkyX is our most lightweight, durable, responsive and cushioned foam yet, and with a manufacturing process that makes it more affordable,” says Shi. He adds that in testing the team found that “It will last your whole race — and the second race, the third race, and races after.”

With TPU beads steamed to different densities for zonal optimization around the shoe’s heel, plate and forefoot, Nike SkyX foam helps provide a heel-to-toe rocker sensation that urges you forward, and energy return where heel-strikers need it most (similar to the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-max-dn-official-images" target="_blank">articulated innovation of tuned Air</a>). Designed to compete and complete, every element of the Nike Swooshfly has been specifically engineered for the everyday marathon racer, right down to the sole. On the forefoot, you’ll find Nike’s new <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/acg-unveils-picklejus-big-mountain-trail-runner-with-goatek-traction-innovation" target="_blank">GOATEK rubber</a> to provide increased traction, particularly helpful at puddle-filled water stations, which become far slippier as a race goes on. All this innovation aligned with the needs of marathon racers aiming to cross the finish line in twice the time and double the steps of Kipchoge — and it's competitive with other Nike super shoes. Testing proves that the Swooshfly delivers 16 percent more energy return than the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/vaporfly-4-streakfly-2-official-images" target="null">Nike Vaporfly 4</a> in a men’s size 10. But could Nike Swooshfly match the price brief? “We asked runners in North America what they thought the price was,” says Shi. “Every single one thought it was $200-plus.” To bring back a Shi idiom: No way. The Nike Swooshfly will retail globally for $145, meeting the moment of a more competitive market and an evolving marathon space.

The Race to the Future

Nike Swooshfly, and its Nike SkyX foam, wasn’t only a solution for runners turned racers. It also catalyzed a brand-wide approach to producing cutting-edge products faster.“We saw Nike SkyX was ideal in the Swooshfly, and that solution spurred putting the foam in future running shoes without a plate,” says Bret Schoolmeester, Vice President of Nike Running Footwear. “For us, it begged the question: How can we use this as a model to scale innovation quicker?” Prioritizing tighter teams, leaner logistics and athletes above all, products are already on the way for ACG, Nike Training and Nike Mind categories.

“We’re taking highly calculated risks so that we can get something compelling out to athletes faster than ever, and that’s better for athletes and our business,” says Schoolmeester. As he puts it, speed with intention is always a benefit. And Swooshfly is proof that tight turns, aggressive testing and alignment with factories can create speedy innovation. Peng notes that despite the daunting brief, the shoe took roughly one year to complete — about half the time for a typical new-to-market model.&nbsp; In mission and title, Nike Swooshfly epitomizes a performance-focused race-day option for a marathoner who may not be breaking 2, but who is breaking a barrier. A shoe that, Shi says, he’s most proud of for “its balance.”&nbsp; “Runners often think that paying less means you get less,” he says. “But with this shoe, you get everything you need to do more.”

Nike’s newest super shoe offers stability, durability and competitive performance benefits — all while feeling accessible, from looks to cost.

Making It

How Nike Designed the Swooshfly, an Invitation to the Marathon Starting Line

In July of 2026, more than 10 hours into her race, ultra runner and ACG pro <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/trail-runner-yao-miao-is-running-down-new-goals-with-acg" target="_blank">Yao Miao</a> hit the final wall. Specifically, the eleventh and penultimate section of Camins d’Hèr, a 68-mile ultra race in Spain’s Pyrenees mountain range, which passes through the small localities of Arties to Escunhau, a distance of about 5 kilometers. The stretch is a grueling, exposed vertical climb that squeezes every last drop of mental fortitude out of a runner before they tackle the remaining 8 kilometers to the finish. Even the fittest athletes reliably bonk when they reach it.For Miao, the wall was simply one more obstacle to climb. She’d later cross the finish line, fist raised in the air, completing the race in 13:04:34, the course’s fastest-ever time in the women’s field. Yao Miao is one of the most accomplished racers of her generation. She’s one of only six runners worldwide to win two different UTMB finals events. But she also had a secret tool in her race prep: insights from the Nike Innovation Farm Team, an 18-strong ultra runner cohort who trained in a four-month residency at the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-sport-research-lab-environmental-chambers" target="_blank">Nike Sport Research Lab</a> (NSRL) in Beaverton, Oregon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lab data doesn’t win races,” says Kirby. “Conversations do. The data doesn’t mean anything if we can’t connect it to meaningful relationships with our athletes.”The Farm Team program wrapped in late July. Nike scientists now have their own mountain to climb in sorting through the data, and some intriguing results are bubbling up. One of them, says Kirby, is the improvement in physiological, biomechanical and psychological testing in the eccentric training group, which doesn’t resemble a traditional, blue-chip fitness program. On the mega ramp outside the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/lebron-james-innovation-center-nike-sport-research-lab" target="_blank">LeBron James Innovation Center</a>, while the runners completed punishing repeats, some of them assigned to the downhill regimen barely felt like they were breaking a sweat. This gives credibility to a convention-bucking point in the world of training: Eccentric tolerance is a training variable that must be worked into your plan.While the study’s conclusions are ongoing, the takeways are immediate. And that brings us back to Yao Miao, Camins d’Hèr and the wall.

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

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

Trail Running

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

Seeing Eliud Kipchoge fly by at a 4:34 marathon pace is catching just a glimpse of the greatest of all time honing his craft. Most of his running career hinges on the thankless, unglamorous, but essential training sessions that build his reserve for breaking records. The Kenyan marathoner is synonymous with the Vaporfly and the Alphafly, the pinnacle of Nike’s racing products. In reality, Kipchoge uses many different shoes during training for different workouts — long, easy runs, fartleks, hills, and more. He doesn’t just need a super shoe. He needs a super trainer —&nbsp;a shoe that borrows traditional components from racing footwear, like carbon fiber plates and unique midsole geometries, and translates them into a more durable shoe for year-round training.&nbsp;<a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/zoom-fly-6-official-images" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Zoom Fly 6</a> is Eliud’s latest addition to his training quiver for those days when he needs to push the pace. The silhouette is also emblematic of Eliud’s commitment to test, improve and validate Nike Running’s full lineup of race footwear. According to Elliott Heath, Sr. Expert of Running Footwear at Nike, Eliud’s product knowledge borders on the professional.&nbsp;

“We've started to call Eliud our Product Line Manager on the ground,” says Heath. “He’s doing hand sketches and writing dedicated notes about our prototypes — That’s his baseline. Over the last couple years, he’s gone to the next level of building feedback sheets, giving them to his running camp teammates and asking them to give their own notes. <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-and-eliud-kipchoge-celebrate-20-years" rel="noopener noreferrer">He’s the world’s best marathoner</a>, but he actually feels like a member of our product team.”In the past, Eliud has incorporated the Zoom Fly into his rotation, especially the 5, which was a perfect trainer for his easy Monday runs; he’ll step outside his front door and go anywhere from 12 to 18 miles. When he tested the 6, he immediately noticed the lighter weight and more comfortable upper, both of which he relayed to Heath in his soft-spoken, methodical manner. He’s willing to give constructive feedback, too, but always graciously, such as when he recommended adding a slightly more durable material along the outsole, helping the shoe better withstand a rigorous training schedule. “It’s worth giving a thought,” he scribbled in his notes.

Other cues from Eliud, says Heath, are less obvious but just as revealing. A thoughtfully long pause between sentences. A decisive nod of the head about a feature that’s working. Most notably — and this is what happened with the Zoom Fly 6 — he simply smiles, turning the shoe over in his hands.

Eliud Kipchoge on the Zoom Fly 6

Watching Eliud so eagerly review every shoe in Nike’s lineup is inspiring for Heath and his team. Eliud’s notes help ensure that every Nike silhouette serves a distinct purpose. No one’s as qualified to give that precise, attuned feedback as the greatest marathoner of all time.“Eliud’s commitment to testing our shoes is a testament to how we partner with athletes all the time, not just on race day,” says Heath. “What you do in a race is 5% of your running journey. Anyone who’s racing marathons is spending 95% of their time in other shoes, gritting their teeth through the easy and hard miles that aren’t glamorous. Anytime an athlete wants us to be a part of their 95% as well as their 5% on race day, that’s when we have the real potential to better serve our runners.”

How does Nike use athlete feedback? See and hear marathon GOAT Eliud Kipchoge’s line-by-line and word-for-word notes on your next best training shoe.

Fan 101

Hear From Our Ultimate Wear-Tester on the Zoom Fly 6

Run meetups over bar meetups. Discovery jogs to explore a city (maybe your own). Trading screens and calls for trails and greenery. A new wave of people are embracing running through the lens of health, community and fun, and you have ever reason to join them, says Nike running coach Dora Atim. 

Here, Atim — the trail-exploring, run-loving, self-proclaimed "hype gurl" — shares the immediate benefits she says running can give you.

You Get a New Way to Express Joy I feel like we're in a new “running boom” — the third or fourth one I've seen since I've started running, but this wave feels different. There’s a new generation of runners, and they’re into health and wellness, looking for ways to connect with one another. I mean, people still party. But it’s more for celebration — say, we’ve traveled to another country to do a race and now we're gonna party. And there’s movement in that too, right? We're celebrating because we have achieved something. It’s a beautiful space to be in and I feel like I belong in this this kind of shift. I started running because I wanted to get healthier, fitter, but I also wanted to make it accessible to me — the music, the vibes. I used to rave three or four nights a week. Raving — dancing and moving — is catharsis, and running is the same thing. And it’s like you have a new generation that’s taking the rave to the road.You Make Unexpected Connections What I’ve seen from being lucky enough to travel around the world doing races is that, while you have people from all walks of life, all cultures, there’s this common constant of the run, this common bond and love and challenge. And you build this diverse community that you would otherwise never have had if not for running.You Find New Parts of Yourself Running has helped spark my creative streak. I used to feel like I wasn't a creative person. And my friends would say, “What? You’re so creative!” And now I believe that, because I'm doing something that I enjoy, it doesn't feel forced, and because of it, my creativity just flows. I’ll run and think of some new unlock, be inspired to try something new.

"Bags down, shoes on," says Nike Running Coach Dora Atim. Here she's hitting the trails in the Black Forest ahead of the "Nike: Form Follows Motion" exhibition opening at the Vitra Design Museum.

Dora Atim Nike Athlete - Run Basel

You Find New Parts of Your Home I was born and raised in London. I am a true Londoner. And I feel like running around London is truly iconic. You run through new streets, discover new restaurants, you get to see how everyone moves and people watch, and if you’re me, you think “what a crazy place and I love it.” A run is discovery. I remember, during lockdown, running around Canary Wharf, and I saw this building that I always used to notice and draw pictures of as kid. You know kids in school draw fields, the sun, or Big Ben or whatever, but for me it was this building, because I was fascinated by this flashing light that was always on. We’d drive by it, me and my family, and I’d ask my parents, “Why does this light never turn off?” Flash forward 20 years, and as I’m running around Canary Wharf, I take a turn, look up, and there was the building. And suddenly I was young Dora again and I thought, oh my god, that light is still on and flashing! And that’s running. It makes me look at London differently ever time.You Connect With Nature Growing up, all I knew was concrete jungle, fast-paced environment. And years ago, I was living in east London and I went for a trail run. I got so lost, I was absolutely fuming because I see myself as tough and strong and I’m like, I’m not following my phone, I’m gonna follow the trail and take in the nature. My friends call it “Dora’s scenic route,” which means I’m not going to navigate. And suddenly, I round a bend and I see this park and I felt like I wasn’t in London, like I was transported somewhere else.&nbsp;I see this lake — I've never seen such a big lake in London — and the way the trees were just surrounding it and the sun was beaming through it, it looked like a painting. And I thought, I get to see this because I allowed myself to get lost on a run.Wherever You Go, You Become a Local When I travel, I come right off the plane and it’s bags down, shoes on. One of the first things I do is go out on run. And it’s this awesome experience to be able to explore and learn and take a city in — while doing my thing, getting my movement — and it makes me feel like I know the place. Like I’m the local.

For more runner tips and inspo, follow Dora Atim on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/doradontexplore/?hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@doradontexplore</a>.

Nike running coach Dora Atim has six reasons for you to put on your shoes now.

The Instant Benefits to Being a Runner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking the Mold for Breaking4

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

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

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

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

Davis Jones

Conner Mantz Feature Loop

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

Nike Design

Nike Sports Science

How We Partner With Athletes On New Prototypes

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

A competitive runner from New Jersey, Bennett ran at UNC-Chapel Hill before coaching future Olympians at the post-collegiate level and building what became the Northeast’s most successful high school cross-country program. When Nike asked him to come on as a full-time coach in 2014, he wrote his entire coaching philosophy down on a legal pad and handed it over. Those notes became the NRC Truths, and he’s been building on them ever since.Now, he’s distilled that philosophy into his first book, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/this-is-about-running-this-is-not-about-running-chris-bennett?variant=44778258399266&amp;utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAdGRleAS8sKxwZG9mAmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDzEyNDAyNDU3NDI4NzQxNAABp23OaaCx00NqpSE4294E1HzGDZG4Vcf0Mi5xT0GO6m1eiPpAO8w8HgIVcvCN_aem_MgddCEZLLg7pnZx8cJXz5Q" target="">This Is About Running. This Is Not About Running,</a> a motivational guide that will be released this fall and is available for preorder. It’s a title that, if you know anything about Coach B, tells you everything. Bennett’s not stopping there. Beginning July 7, as part of Nike's 2026 After Dark Tour, his popular podcast will feature a months-long series of conversations with women across the world. From elite athletes to first-time racers, Coach B is passing the mic to women who are changing the game and redefining what’s possible.&nbsp;Below, he talks about why he fell in love with running; what he believes about the sport; and why the job, as he sees it, is never finished.

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

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

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

You have a book coming out called This Is About Running. This Is Not About Running. Can you talk about the book and elaborate more on the title?It’s another one of those things I would casually say that kind of took off. I’d say it after making a point that was seemingly about running, but that was really about something bigger. It goes back to coaching kids. I had to make sure that the 90 minutes I had with them every day counted. I wanted them to have the opportunity to learn something about life. I felt like I would be a failure as a coach if the only thing they walked away with was the ability to go farther or go faster.&nbsp;I wanted to give them strengths and habits they could carry into the rest of their lives. How you deal with struggle, how you have relationships with people, how you get through hard times, how you dig deeper, how you act as a supportive teammate to others — these are things that go on during practice. You have to get across to your athletes or your students that these are things you will take with you out of here. Don’t leave this at practice. Bring this home.“This is about running, this is not about running” has been the foundation of my coaching for 18 years. And the book embodies that —&nbsp;if you’re a runner, whether a new runner or long-time runner, you’re going to end the book and you’re going to be a better runner. But if you’ve never gone for a run before in your life, you’re going to be a better person. It doesn’t need to lead to you running.Regardless of where you’re coming from, whether you’re about to graduate the eighth grade, going through a breakup, training for a marathon or taking on any other kind of challenge, this book is for you. It’s about running. But it’s also about much more than running.<ul><li><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/this-is-about-running-this-is-not-about-running-chris-bennett?variant=44778258399266&amp;utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAdGRleAS8sKxwZG9mAmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDzEyNDAyNDU3NDI4NzQxNAABp23OaaCx00NqpSE4294E1HzGDZG4Vcf0Mi5xT0GO6m1eiPpAO8w8HgIVcvCN_aem_MgddCEZLLg7pnZx8cJXz5Q" target="_blank">Pre-order copy a copy of Coach B's book in the USA</a></li><li><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://lnkfi.re/yfzwUn?utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGnqCOF01UFfBXwJ8XK36zI9N7fDAttdKU2JBLcRLWR75KFBh8RYUAatrhGyYM_aem_Oa3G0bKKyFdPFbYhtx6OHA" target="_blank">Pre-order a copy of Coach B's book in the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ and Europe</a> </li></ul>

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

Talking Craft

5 Questions With Nike Running’s Coach Bennett

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Story Landing

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Basketball

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Short Stories

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

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

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

This is where listening to the athlete is made manifest.

Next Level

The LeBron James Innovation Center

At Philip H. Knight Campus, in Beaverton, Oregon, the day doesn’t start at dawn. On this crisp autumn Tuesday morning, employees arrive before the sun, jogging around campus or grinding through reps in the weight room. In Studio 4 of the Nike Sports Center gym, a crew of about 20 are warming up for a 7 a.m. HIIT class.&nbsp;One of the class-goers is CEO &amp; President <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/company/people/elliott-hill" target="_blank">Elliott Hill</a>, both regular patron and proselytizer of the campus’s facilities. This morning, he’s front-row, dead-center of class, two dumbbells at his feet. The workout playlist is straight bangers, and Hill is matching the music’s energy and chatting up his neighbors, asking about their Portland Marathon finish times, trying to distract them from the last 10 seconds of a plank. He’s gregarious and in high spirits despite the early hour, as upbeat and encouraging as a cheerleader and coach rolled into one. After class, an employee takes the opportunity to reintroduce herself. She and Hill had met once before, she explains, while she was working in retail in Louisville, Kentucky. He’d given her some career advice: If she wanted to advance at Nike, she needed to look two jobs ahead, assess what skills were needed, and commit to learning them. Now, 12 years later, she’s a product line manager for Nike Pro training apparel. Hill shakes her hand and says he still stands by that advice — success, in his eyes, is about filling out your toolbox, not just waiting for people to hand you the tools. Both of them are proof of what happens when one does.

One of Hill’s proudest accomplishments on campus is getting more employees back in the gyms, he says. “We’re a sports company, a movement company, and I want people to feel and see that.”

On any given weekday morning, you’ll find Hill in the Philip H. Knight Campus gyms, living the company’s mantra to make sport a daily habit.

"I think we have one of the most beautiful, simple and aspirational mission statements that exists," Hill says. "'To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.' I really love the word 'athlete*' with an asterisk. There's a statement behind it. 'If you have a body, you are an athlete.' It challenges us to serve every human being. All 8 billion people are athletes."

Hill’s time at NIKE, Inc., from intern to company leader, has been so distinctive and remarkable that <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliotthillnike/" target="_blank">his career ladder</a> was the rare LinkedIn page to go viral. This October, he’s hit one year in the CEO role. It’s been a good year, in Hill’s eyes — Nike’s <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/faith-kipyegon-nike-breaking4-journey" target="_blank">shown up for athletes</a>, debuted <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-vomero-plus-vomero-premium-official-images" target="_blank">fresh product</a>, reignited its marketplace relationships — but more than that, it’s been a promising stepping stone. The best is yet to come, Hill says; as much momentum as Nike’s had, he still gives the company a 6 out of 10 for fulfilling its potential. “I do celebrate the wins, and I make sure people enjoy them — but I am quick to move to, ‘Okay, what could we have done better?’ Or, ‘Okay, great job. Now, let's get going,&nbsp;’cause we got so much more work to do.” As any CEO would be, Hill is highly attuned to the dogged complaints in recent years that Nike has stopped innovating, and he’s eager to disprove them. He thrives on a challenge, he says, and knows that true innovation is born from tension, not stability. Sitting outside the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://lebronjamesinnovationcenter.nike.com/" target="_blank">LeBron James Innovation Center</a> after his HIIT class, he notices two employees walking into the building. He beckons them over — hollers, actually — and asks about their progress working on new cleats. Restoring the pride employees have in the company was important: If they didn’t believe in themselves, no one else would either. “If we're gonna make baseball cleats, make the best baseball cleats,” implores Hill. “If we’re gonna make football cleats, make the best football cleats.” Eager to flex on their work, they invite him to judge it for himself: Alpine conference room, next week. Hill repeats the location and time back to them. It’s a date.&nbsp;

One year in, Hill, 62, has made it his mission to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/elliott-hill-nike-interview" target="_blank">reignite Nike’s reputation</a> as a trailblazing sports company and a leader of innovation — not merely a product company, but an ideas company. And he’s adamant that those ideas be rooted in sport, with athletes at the center. He says he’s bullish for the future, and each day seems to give him a new reason to be. Take today’s employee chat on cleats. “They were so proud to say, ‘Look at what I got coming.’ That’s what I want,” says Hill. For people to not just work hard, but to also have the steely conviction that what they’re making is good, worth bragging about. To know winning is winning together. “I want people to feel a sense of pride in their work, in their craft, in their service to the athlete.”&nbsp; He sees this charge as a group activity, something to which he holds himself and everyone else at the company accountable. Motivation, for Hill, is something of an extreme sport: He leads with an enthusiasm so contagious, it makes even the naysayers devout. He recruits you into dreaming bigger and better, insisting that winning as a team is the only way to win — while still recognizing and celebrating the team players. It’s the forest and the trees. “The way he makes everybody in the room feel special is just unbelievable,” says Dan Lanning, the head coach of the University of Oregon football team. “I remember walking away from our first interaction, telling my wife, ‘This guy's gonna make it tick.’”

He brings that same personable attentiveness to Nike athletes. You can’t serve the athlete if you’re not connected to them, and Hill stresses the importance of building genuine relationships. “It’s important to know that we’re watching,” he says, punctuating his words with gentle karate chops atop the table outside the LeBron James Innovation Center. “Great relationships are built on mutual trust and respect, over time, from showing up. So first game, you get in the ring and you want me to go? I’ll be there.” No need to take his word for it. He picks up his work phone — not to be confused with his personal phone, also on the table, in an identical case — and pulls up a text thread with the New York Liberty’s <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/sabrina-ionescu-exclusive-interview" target="_blank">Sabrina Ionescu</a>. (When a GOAT athlete called him earlier in the morning, it was on his personal line.) The thread is several scrolls long; they’re sending each other photos, Hill is checking in after games. Most of their chatter is about the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-sabrina-3-official-images-sabrina-ionescu" target="_blank">Sabrina 3</a>, the WNBA player’s latest Nike signature shoe, released earlier this year. He opens a photo from May 17, the day of the Liberty season opener against the Las Vegas Aces. Hill; his wife, Gina; Ionescu; Tom Peddie, GM/VP of North America; and his wife, Sharon, put their feet together, showing off a circle of Nikes. “I really value Elliott’s approach," says Ionescu. "I always feel my voice is being heard when I share with him what is important to me to grow my business. He knows how to connect with people on a human level, and I couldn’t be more grateful for him to be back in the Nike family.”

Hill regularly reaches out to Nike athletes, congratulating them on their wins. When the New York Liberty took the WNBA title last year, Hill immediately congratulated Nike athlete Sabrina Ionescu, one of many exchanges in their scrolls-long text thread.

Circle up: clockwise from top, Sabrina Ionescu in the turquoise Sabrina 3, Elliott Hill in the Kobe 7, Gina Hill in the black-and-white Sabrina 3, Tom Peddie in the white A'One, Sharon Peddie in the pink A‘ja One.

Hill wants athletes to feel not only seen, but also supported, and certain that they are in good hands. At the Nike Football Summit, in June, Brazilian football legend and 31-year Nike athlete Ronaldo (R9) found himself with the other top footballers of all time: Vinícius Júnior, Kerolin, Didier Drogba, Matheus Cunha, Edgar Davids — plus Hill, who gave them a rousing pep talk. “Elliott giving us a rallying speech on how important we were to the company and how significant our contribution to the team was — it made us feel special, valued and inspired,” says R9.In Hill’s mind, those feelings needed to cascade to restoring external relationships too. So this past year, he’s been working the phone. Almost immediately after becoming CEO, he called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to ensure the extension of Nike’s licensing and uniform deal through 2038. Next up were calls to retail partners like DICK'S Sporting Goods&nbsp;and JD Sports, partnerships that had weakened during the company’s focus on direct-to-consumer. No longer: Those wholesalers, Hill says, are a crucial element not only of sales, but of product feedback.&nbsp;This outreach matters, says Ed&nbsp;Stack, Executive Chairman&nbsp; of DICK’S Sporting Goods&nbsp;and Foot Locker, who’s known Hill for more than 25 years. “Elliott tells it like it is, and his transparency builds trust that fosters a great business relationship," says Stack. "Elliott’s greatest impact to Nike is that Nike now believes it can be Nike again, and I can guarantee that its wholesale partners now share the same belief.”&nbsp;

Later that morning, Hill walks around campus, pointing out changes he’s implemented. Coming out of a 2020 retirement to take the helm last year, he says he knew employees needed a cultural change. To feel it, he thought, they needed to see it. He got the fountain that runs along the Sebastian Coe building turned back on, “because it signals that the water’s running, that we’re back in our flow.” Company adages have been turned tangible: giant-letter installations of Nike Maxims like “DO THE RIGHT THING” and “WIN AS A TEAM” are displayed throughout campus, as well as a sleek digital clock that counts down to major sports events like the 2026 Winter Olympics and the World Cup. Sport is always imminent, and Hill doesn’t want employees to forget that. Any second of any day, athletes are somewhere training. Cities are preparing. Fans are anticipating. “We gotta get focused, so we’re always preparing ourselves,” he says. All change has to start from within, and one of Hill’s primary focuses has been establishing a fresh <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/company" target="_blank">senior leadership team</a>, many of whom are NIKE, Inc. veterans. Most notably, Hill’s restructured the company to organize by sport (running, basketball, global football and more), instead of by women’s, men’s and kids. The reorganization and strategy reset — the “Sport Offense” — allows teams to garner specific insights about athletes and use them to drive innovation and storytelling. “We have small teams who are, in each of those segments, trying to understand their core consumer,” says Hill, pointing out the difference, say, between where a Nike basketball consumer shops and where a Jordan one does. “That’s a way to take $47 billion of revenue, break it down by sport, and then hold each of those sports responsible for revenue, margin and market share.”Hill moves briskly, even after the vigorous class, equal parts anticipation of what’s to come and satisfaction with what’s come so far, fueled by passion and the overnight oats he packed himself for post-workout. One of his proudest campus accomplishments, he says, has been getting more people in the company gyms. It isn’t uncommon for employees, on their way to a meeting or taking a kombucha break, to run into Hill, who is likely to encourage them to get a workout in. When he started as CEO, he realized that the company’s state-of-the-art gym facilities were largely empty, in part because employees weren’t allowed to bring their children. He invited families in and started working on bringing back extracurriculars for kids, like the erstwhile swim program and intramural sports. With his push, the gyms are filling back up. Case in point: That morning, before class, he walked through rows of treadmills and barbell and weight spaces, in use. Nike’s ethos doesn‘t end with the consumer: Sport should propel the lives of employees too.&nbsp;

Elliott Hill presents a custom Nike Breaking4 jacket to world champion runner Faith Kipyegon, who, with Nike’s help, attempted to break the 4-minute mile in June.

Ann Miller, EVP Global Sports Marketing, Elliott Hill and three-time WNBA champion and Nike athlete A’ja Wilson

Converse athlete Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with Hill and the new SHAI:001 signature shoe.

Hill catches up with South Carolina Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley at Philip H. Knight Campus in Beaverton, Oregon.

Hill and football legend Ronaldo connected on campus last summer.

Celebrating sport with employees is a huge priority for Hill, pictured here playing a game between a Nike employee team (the Nike Knights) and Hill’s Austin Moontowers baseball club this past summer.

“Sports — playing them, watching ’em, reading about them — have always been a part of my life," says Hill.

Hill ringing the bell for the final lap of The Nike Mile, a competitive race he brought back to crown the fastest employees at the company's Just Do It day in June.

For his part, Hill is an avid bicyclist and hiker, says his wife, Gina — but really, he’s a fanatic about any sort of dynamic movement, be it bobsledding or tai chi. “He’s super curious, and he’s an open book: I’m vulnerable, maybe I won’t succeed at this, but I’m going to give it a shot,” she says. “Which is a great model for the greater Nike group, not being afraid to try new things and not being afraid to ask questions.” Hill and Gina — who met at Nike — usually spend their mornings working out together, but today's HIIT class was a particularly special occasion. It was Gina’s first day cleared to go back to exercise after remission. This past April, six months into his tenure, Hill got a phone call he’ll never forget: Gina had breast cancer. Hill was in New York and was due to meet with investors in 10 minutes. He informed the two leaders he was with; he cried. “Then you wipe your eyes and go and get your shit together,” says Hill. Both he and Gina aren’t ones to dwell or ruminate; they are doers, people of action. “We are big believers in control what you can control and try not to waste energy on the stuff that you can’t control,” he says. Gina had a double mastectomy, and Hill was by her side, driving her to appointments and procedures. Creating a culture where that balance can and should happen is a point of pride, says Hill. “I think it’s good for the boss to say, ‘You know what, I’m going to go take care of my wife. You guys get out there and roll.’”

Hill doesn‘t have the typical CEO pedigree. He grew up in a “blue collar, hard-working, culturally and racially diverse” neighborhood in Austin, Texas, a latchkey kid with a single mother who was school teacher. Before Nike, he graduated from Texas Christian University with a degree in kinesiology. “I don't want to be stereotypical, and I probably go to the extreme to break that — making fun of myself to get people to be able to connect with me on a personal level,” he says, sipping from a cup of black coffee. (Once, he offered to shave his head if his team made budget for that fiscal year — and when it happened, he fulfilled his end of the bargain on a stage in front of them.)&nbsp; The method works: Gina says her husband is particularly attuned to making people feel comfortable, which comes from his bottomless curiosity. “He’s just so open and so approachable that people of all levels feel like they can reach out to him.” Growing up, sport was a way to shake the stigma of being the kid in the neighborhood without a dad. “I always felt like I had something to prove to everybody, and that gets ingrained in your head,” he says. He became an overachiever: student class president, president of his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. “I was always the guy who was pushing myself, not just in sports.” That competitive nature shepherded him through increasingly senior roles at Nike, and, along the way, his tenure dictated the course of his life.&nbsp; Including his second start. Even after four years of active retirement, Hill knew he wasn’t completely out of the Nike game. He’d kept busy, serving as a business consultant and launching the Travis County Parks Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports parks in Austin, Texas. But his attention to the brand persisted, a mental muscle memory. He couldn’t help himself from noting which brand of sneakers he’d see on people walking down the street. “Even when we were traveling for fun, he was like, ‘Do you mind if we just walk through the Foot Locker and see what’s going on?” recalls Gina.

Which might be why his return has been so smooth. Retirement was nice, but: “I’m meant to grind. I’m meant to work,” he says. “I’m meant to be part of a team, hopefully competing. And not just competing — winning.” The task ahead — reestablishing the brand’s cultural and market dominance — only excites him. It also keeps him quite busy: After he wraps up this interview, outside Nike’s building dedicated to innovation, Hill’s off to the Department of Nike Archives, a repository of more than five decades of company history. There, he’ll look through a curated exhibit of Nike’s presence at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics — the sporting event that put Nike on the map — and get inspiration for how the brand can come out in force for LA28. He’s the type of leader that knows you can’t get where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been. The past unlocks the future. Hill’s got the key.&nbsp;

Jazmine Hughes is a writer, professor and public speaker. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, VOGUE, the Washington Post, and New York magazine, among many others, where she has profiled people such as Viola Davis, Whoopi Goldberg, Usher, Lenny Kravitz, Questlove, Sarah Paulson and Julianne Moore. She has two National Magazine Awards. Jazmine has taught writing classes and workshops at Cornell University, The New School of Social Research, and the Lower East Side Girls Club, and moderated panels for American Express, Netflix and the Tribeca Film Festival. She lives between New York City and Mexico.&nbsp;

Jazmine Hughes

Showing up for athletes, igniting employee pride, restoring relationships, stoking innovation. Elliott Hill's accomplished a lot in a year. He says there's far more to come.

Nike Leadership

How the CEO of Sport Is Taking Nike Back to Its Roots

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

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

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

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

Ask a Sport Scientist

How Can I Become a Better Runner?

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.

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

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.

Nike Heritage

The Nike Swoosh Logo: From Humble Beginnings to Global Icon

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.

The LeBron James Innovation Center

How the CEO of Sport Is Taking Nike Back to Its Roots

How Can I Become a Better Runner?

The Nike Swoosh Logo: From Humble Beginnings to Global Icon

The History of Virgil Abloh's “The Ten”

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The History of Steve Prefontaine’s "Signature" Track Spike

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

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

Rising Together

For Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, There’s No Place Like First Place