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

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

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

Sofieke van Bilsen

Photo Essay

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

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

2005-2009

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

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

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

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

2011-2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

2016-2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ultra Trail Running Can Take Everything You’ve Got — and Give You Even More

NExt volume

Liquid Max Hero Video

On the raucous machinery floor of Nike’s Air Manufacturing Innovation facility, a group of engineers study an inflated Air Max unit prototype. Its shape is stunningly technical. This “clover” unit, the visual cue that would later become the flowering, minimalist Air bag for the new <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-liquid-max-merges-superior-comfort-and-air-max-heritage" target="_blank">Nike Air Liquid Max</a>, is curved to help the wearer glide from each step to the next. The ride is meant to be incomparably smooth.&nbsp;But there’s a catch. The unique shape of the bag is so complex it needs a lot of special attention. It’s the first Max unit to include internal cut-outs. The trim, or the perimeter of the bag, is complicated to get right. Air Max engineers have a word to describe Air: elastomeric. It means that Air has the ability to transform based on changing variables like temperature and humidity. As soon as you introduce more complexity to the shape of a filled Air bag, the harder it is to cut it to a precise shape over and over again across a full size run. Think of a cookie cutter mold. The more complicated the shape, the greater the margin for error when you slice the dough. Now imagine that dough is curved upward. That’s the case for this Max Air bag, and any dip or rise in room temperature can make the bag change shape ever so slightly.&nbsp;What's more, the same design has to be replicated hundreds of thousands of times.&nbsp;High complexity. High precision. All in a minimalist silhouette meant to feel like the most nothing Max ever.&nbsp;

What does it mean to walk on Nike Air? There’s the comfort, obviously. Every step should feel effortless. Then there’s the unmistakable look, beginning with the Air Max I in 1987, when the big see-through bubble was actually a prism into the future of shoe cushioning. But Nike Air could never just be a platform built on inspiration. It needed to be built on technical rigor to give a precisely tuned feeling.&nbsp;While the evocation of “walking on air” is easy, creating it is anything but.

nike liquid max concepts

The silhouette was originally briefed in 2019 and tag-lined “The Most Nothing Max.” The goal was to create an Air Max that felt light, fluid, flexible and barely detectable — a goal that’s historically been at odds with the platform.

In an Air Max legacy that was founded on the big bubble, designers wondered whether an Air Max unit could, should, feel like nothing. A filled Air bag, when combined with layers of cement foam and rubber, can come across as rigid and slappy, making it challenging to feel a smooth step-to-step transition.&nbsp;“Liquid Max had to set a new visual precedent, but the Air unit also had to give a new sensation for walking on Air,” says Ditte Kuijpers, Design Director, Nike Sportswear Innovation Footwear. “People needed to both feel and see how it was different. Every component of the shoe had to work together for this to happen.”

To begin, designers and engineers discussed how this unit would break from Air Max models of the past. A few key descriptions stood out as inspiration: Sleek. Reductive. Minimalist. The Air Max unit had to be lighter and more flexible than previous models. When Nike designers began conceptualizing this sleeker unit, one source came from an unlikely place: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-max-scorpion-official-images-release-date" target="null">Air Max Scorpion</a>. Released in 2021, it was maximalist in the truest sense, featuring an enormous unit shaped by ambitious proportions. It was the largest unit ever created in terms of volume of Air per square inch. One observation stood out from designing the Scorpion bag: its emphasis on a term called “point loading.” This is when each area of cushioning is precisely mapped against the entirety of your foot, comfortably spreading your bodyweight out on certain points of the bag. Each part of the Air unit can have a different stiffness or softness.&nbsp;

liquid-gum-run

“Scorpion gave the team a good starting point,” says Wade Flanagan, Director of Nike Air Innovation. “We learned new techniques that could help us tune the bag for flexibility across different zones. Comparing the Scorpion bag to Liquid Max, we wanted to make something lighter, more flexible, more minimalist, but just as responsive.”But cutting the bags to achieve this effect is complicated, says Flanagan. Each Air bag almost has a mind of its own because of how it can change in the slightest of circumstances. Trimming each one perfectly, he says, is like hitting a moving target.

The silhouette’s name shifted to Liquid Max for good reason: The unit had to move with a undetectably smooth transition, like liquid. One of the designers’ early prototypes used a modified version of the Air Max DN8’s Air units, a row of pressurized tubes across the full length of the foot. To create a more contoured system that worked with the foot, and to reduce the number of parts in the shoe, designers experimented with different versions of a drop-in midsole.Some prototypes of the Air unit were more organic. Others were more industrial. Some shapes tried turning visual details into mechanical advantages. Could a sly spelling of “Air Max” on the outsole create a trampoline-like effect through the middle of the letters? The possibilities were wide open. Testing wasn’t limited to the physical world, either. A digital method called Finite Element Analysis, or FEA, helped designers simulate the real-life forces of a person walking in the shoe, putting pressure on different regions of the unit and then measuring how it responded.&nbsp;

This testing through trial and error helped designers and engineers land on a beautiful, two-chambered, full-length Air unit design. Maybe its most noticeable shift from Air units of the past was also its most challenging on a technical level: cutting out inserts in the bag; coring out unnecessary parts in the middle; and molding it in a curved, rockered shape to make it more minimalist. Trimming a unit this complicated inside and out, on a curve? It hadn’t been done before. It would require a more precise kind of Air manufacturing.&nbsp;

nike liquid select v02 wht

The Liquid Max team began working closely with the technicians at Nike’s Air Manufacturing Innovation (Air MI) facilities in Beaverton, Ore. There was basically no margin for error. Cut the bag at a poor angle, and the bag can pop. Cut it too wide, and you leave behind messy, awkward flanges around the perimeter. A dynamic ingredient like Air is also highly sensitive to the environment around it, meaning the bag can change shape in an instant based on the indoor temperature, resulting in inconsistent sizes. Air unit manufacturing is the equivalent of baking the world’s coolest soufflé.

nike liquid selects v02

The final version of the Liquid Max Air unit is what happens when bold creativity meets manufacturing ingenuity. And the strategies employed to make the Air unit go beyond any single shoe.“The Liquid Max unit is an example of when our designers, engineers and Air MI technicians set their sight on a challenge and overcome it,” says Flanagan. “A lot of that comes from being inspired to challenge limitations and push Air Max to a new place so we can provide new benefits to people who wear it.”

Nike Air Liquid Max is the first Max unit to include internal cut-outs. It ushers in an era for the Air Max franchise where precision and complexity go hand in hand.

Explore Nike, Converse and Jordan footwear and apparel design stories featuring Nike Air Force 1, Nike Air Jordan, Nike Air Max and more.

Design

Making It

Less Is Max In the Newest Version of Nike Air

About Nike - Stories from Inside NIKE, Inc.

For most of his soaring rise as the prospective No.1 pick in a stacked NBA draft, 19-year-old AJ Dybantsa Jr. had no idea of the power he possessed in his first name.“About a year ago, somebody asked me, ‘What’s AJ stand for?’” he recalls. “I told them, ‘Anicet.’ They asked, ‘What’s that mean?’ And, honestly, I didn’t know. So, I looked it up. It turns out that my name translated from Greek means ‘undefeated.’”

aj-dybantsa-contact-sheet

Sitting inside his childhood home in Brockton, Mass., AJ told this story the night before announcing the biggest decision of his life. On April 23, the 6-foot-9 wing player officially declared for the 2026 NBA Draft, following a one-and-done, All-American freshman season at Brigham Young University (BYU). To make the announcement, AJ returned to his former school, Davis Elementary, where his name is immortalized on a page he scribbled into his first-grade yearbook: My name is Anicet…When I grow up, I’d like to be a basketball player. It’s not uncommon for kids to confess pro athlete aspirations, but few actually deliver on a declaration quite like the young Anicet, who applied his indomitable vision toward reaching the pro game.

The news arrives at the same time as Nike and AJ are taking the next step in their partnership. By coincidence or fate, AJ joined Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, in 2024. This was after he stamped his game at the national level. In the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/next-generation-basketball-eybl-grassroots" target="_blank">Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL)</a>, he played for the Oakland Soldiers and Elite Expressions (MA), where he led the 2023 Peach Jam circuit in scoring. He’d continue that trend at BYU. Last season, AJ led the entire nation in scoring at 25.5 points a game, the third most ever by a freshman in Division I history.On the eve of his draft announcement, AJ reflected upon his path to the NBA with longtime sneaker writer Aaron Dodson.﻿

The Record: Paint a picture of the journey you’ve been on. How long have you been working toward declaring for the NBA Draft?AJ Dybantsa:&nbsp;I first knew I wanted to go to the NBA in sixth grade, when I was about 12 years old. But I probably didn’t think that was realistic until my eighth-grade year during the COVID-19 pandemic year, when I was working out while everybody else was inside. When I came back to school, I had grown 5 inches in the summer and felt like I was better than everyone else on the court. Ever since I played varsity as an eighth grader, I’ve been looking forward to entering my name in the NBA Draft, then, ultimately, hearing my name on draft night.TR: As it goes, your father really pushed you to play basketball as a kid. He got your attention around the age of 5 with a&nbsp;Spider-Man-themed hoop for your bedroom door. In a way, it became your own origin story.&nbsp;AJ:&nbsp;My first memory of basketball would be the&nbsp;Spider-Man&nbsp;hoop story. I remember my dad came into our house, like, ‘AJ, I got a present for you.’ It was before Christmas, so I was surprised I was getting a present. He hung the hoop up on my door. From there, I was just shooting from my bed all the time.TR: Do you still have it?AJ: [Laughs] Sadly, the Spider-Man hoop is long gone. But the story is true:&nbsp;Spider-Man&nbsp;made me start playing basketball.

TR: You had your way against opponents at the high school level. Take us back to your experience playing EYBL. How did it help shape you as a player?AJ:&nbsp;EYBL shaped me a lot. I was playing top players who were a class or two above me, and I was making a name for myself as one of the younger guys on the circuit. That 2023 Peach Jam was the season I led the league in scoring as a freshman. So I was 15, 16 years old, scoring 27 a game. That was when I figured out my flow — what I was going to be as a player, where my spots were gonna be. It was fun killing in those games.

TR: You also had plenty of stops where pros would roll in to watch you play.AJ: Yeah, that summer also would’ve been one of my first times being around LeBron James. We connected, and I went out to California to work out with ’Bron, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/kevin-durant-interview-nike-eybl-grassroots-basketball" target="_blank">Kevin Durant</a>, Paul George, Chris Paul, a whole bunch of NBA guys.TR: What was your first workout with an NBA player?AJ:&nbsp;My first-ever NBA workout was with KD. When I got to the gym, he was in the back stretching. I was far away, so I didn’t know who it was at first. Then he came up to me, said, ‘What’s good?’ and I dapped him up. I don’t really get starstruck, but in my mind, I’m like, I couldn’t believe it. That’s KD. He asked if I wanted to get some shots up. I was like, ‘Ummm, yeah…duh.’ [Laughs].&nbsp;TR: Anything you remember from that workout?AJ: I just remember trying to force myself to make every shot because I didn’t want to look crazy. I’m in high school next to KD, who is shooting NBA 3s off one leg. Those guys hit 90 percent of their shots in practices. They don’t miss.&nbsp;TR: How would you describe the way you play the game, particularly to someone who’s never seen you on the court before?AJ: To the fan’s eye, I think I’m considered very flashy and exciting to watch. I dunk a lot, do a lot of long crossovers and shoot 3s. But I’m about playing simply and effectively, just trying to win the game. I’m what fans want to see because I’m an exciting competitor who plays with a lot of passion.

TR: How exactly did Nike approach you about signing an NIL deal when you still were in high school?AJ:&nbsp;This was back when NIL had kind of just started, so I hadn’t ever considered the possibility of joining the brand that early. All I could think was, My favorite players are signed with Nike: KD, LeBron. It’s one of the best sports marketing brands — ever. So, I immediately said, ‘We gotta go with Nike.’TR: Since you’ve been with Nike, you’ve had the opportunity to be the face of a few different silo unveils. One of those was headlining the Nike G.T. Future last year.&nbsp; AJ:&nbsp;When Nike first brought me the G.T. Future, I said, ‘I can be the face of this shoe.’ Everybody thinks I’m the future — and I think I’m the future. So it makes sense that I debuted the G.T. Future.

TR:&nbsp;This gets at something I wanted to ask you. You’ve made basketball your life’s business since you were a kid. From the time you were little, you had this drive to create a future for yourself at the pro level. How do you feel that you represent the future of basketball?AJ: I just think the new generation of talent is stepping in and taking the lead. In my game, I think I fit in the mix as a hybrid shooting guard/forward that can do a little bit of everything. But I’ve always had this mindset to be the best. When I was in sixth grade, I told my dad that I wanted to get into the league. He told me, ‘I’ll do whatever I can to help you get there. You’re going to be put in certain situations so you face the best competition. It’s going to be tough.’ I told him, ‘Let’s do it.’ I was ready.&nbsp;TR: You’ve brought that confidence into your shoe rotation. At BYU, you wore a different Nike Basketball shoe every time you stepped out on the floor.&nbsp;AJ: When I was growing up, I basically wore the same shoes every game. So in high school when I signed with Nike, you get new shoes all the time. So I said to myself, ‘I’m going to wear a different shoe every game.’ I have so many shoes, so if I like a shoe, I’m gonna wear and play in it. I try not to live by superstitions. People are like, ‘If I play good in this shoe, I’m going to keep wearing it.’ Nah, I’m not tryna do all that. I think I only repeated a shoe one time.

aj-dybantsa-timelaps

TR: What’s the dopest pair you think you laced up?AJ: The&nbsp;Spider-Man&nbsp;Nike G.T. Cut 1s I got were&nbsp;so&nbsp;crazy. I played in them against Kansas after the brand sent them to me. It had one of my own logos on it and everything. The G.T. Cut 1 is probably one of my — if not my — favorite basketball shoe. Deep down the line, if I get signature shoes, I want a&nbsp;Spider-Man&nbsp;colorway for every number. Just because that’s my origin, and they’ll probably be fire to some little kids.TR: So you dream of getting your own shoe?AJ:&nbsp;A signature shoe is the goal. When I signed with Nike, I started thinking it would be cool to get my own shoe. Because Nike would always send me different Kobes or Jas or KDs. So it was like, ‘I’m wearing all these other players’ shoes — what if I could get my own and other players wore mine?’

TR: There’s the realization that you could make the pros someday, and then there’s the reality that you might go No. 1. When was the first time you saw yourself projected as the No. 1 pick?AJ:&nbsp;That was in eighth grade. The national player rankings came out, and the headlines read, ‘AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer and Cooper Flagg...all potential No. 1 picks in the 2026 NBA Draft.’ Since that day, I’ve put in the work to be the No. 1 pick.TR:&nbsp;How important was it to you to go back to Brockton and make the draft announcement at your elementary school?AJ:&nbsp;There are plenty of stories about teachers saying to students, ‘Be realistic with your dreams.’ But I remember teachers at my school when I told them that I wanted to go pro someday. And they always told me, ‘You can go do it.’ I wanted this moment to honor that belief.

We talk with the prospective No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft about his restless motivation, his path through elite pipelines like Nike EYBL and his hopes for his pro future.

How I Got Here

On the Eve of His Pro Career, AJ Dybantsa Is Already Undefeated

For Yao Miao, becoming the “Queen of Trail Running” in China took everything she had. Yao grew up in a small farming village in China’s Guizhou Province, the youngest of six daughters. She often helped her parents, working long hours in the rice fields, but even as a child she knew she wanted to pursue a future outside of her rural community. That opportunity came in middle school. Yao left home when she was selected as one of four students from her area to attend a state-run sports school for future elite athletes. The early days were tough. Leaving her family wasn’t easy, and she often felt lonely and homesick. Her body struggled to adapt to a kind of training she had never done before. But it was there that she discovered her passion for trail running.Overtime, her natural resilience paid off. She pushed through injuries and setbacks to become Asia’s first three-time Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) Finals champion, one of the most celebrated trail running races in the world.Now, as she joins the ACG <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-acg-all-conditions-racing-department" target="null">All Conditions Racing Department</a>, ACG's roster of elite trail running athletes, Yao looks back on where her journey began, the victories and challenges along the way, and how her ACG partnership will help reach a new generation of athletes.

My hometown helped shape me into an elite athlete. There are many small mountains, and I played there when I was young, so I grew used to that terrain. That experience helped me become a strong trail runner. I really enjoy running in China’s mountain environments, especially running on the Great Wall.It’s important to know that you don’t have to reach your goals immediately. At sport school, I focused mainly on running and was part of an organized team. But after graduating in 2016, I was not chosen to join a professional team or university. So, I started working. I handed out flyers at a gym, then I helped my sister at her makeup shop. I felt lost. I wasn’t training like an athlete anymore.I wasn’t interested in anything but running. Eventually, that rejection was motivating for me. I had the opportunity to enter a trail race. While I didn’t finish, that failure to finish made me feel I needed to come back to trail running. My goal was to become the best trail runner of all time. I made up my mind to keep working and continue racing. I believed I could succeed and I wanted to prove it.One of my most challenging races was in 2019 at UTMB. During the 168km run, I had a period where I lost my vision. I was racing so much that my body couldn’t bear the strain of so many competitions. I couldn’t finish the race, and the organizers asked me to quit. I was very nervous because I worried I might never see again and not be able to return to trail running. The vision loss was only temporary, but I felt like I was losing confidence in the sport.

Getting my footing in trail running took time, but that journey was so rewarding. After my first championship in 2018, I knew I had the talent and motivation to become an elite trail runner. I kept chasing another win but couldn't seem to get one. I struggled in 2019 with several DNFs and stopped racing in 2020. But I still had this intense passion for the sport, so I came back in 2023. I finally won again in 2024, the OCC-UTMB, which was my most satisfying victory. I was back! The hard work paid off, and I felt like I could finally move forward.For me, the most important mindset is love for the sport. I’ve faced many challenges, but because I love trail running, I’ve been able to keep going and become who I am today.

I want trail runners to think about how their actions affect the environment. Trail running is becoming popular very quickly. However, many runners still don’t think enough about protecting their environment. I encourage runners to care for the outdoors and our planet — stay on marked trails, carry out their trash properly, respect the wildlife. Protecting these spaces is part of being a responsible runner. I know it’s not easy to educate everyone, but I can start with myself and help model good behavior. Last year, I helped organize events focused on environmental protection and I hope, in the future, more people will join me.I know how much I can do with ACG to build my dream and support the next generation. I’m proud to launch the Nike-supported “Boundless Girls with Yao Miao” initiative that will help more girls in many Chinese primary and secondary schools access sports. I want to inspire teenage girls who grow up in underdeveloped areas like I did to find their confidence and know that the world is vast. Sport has the power to open new doors for them.

Her rise from rural China to three‑time UTMB Finals champion — and now member of the ACG All Conditions Racing Department — is a story of endurance, belief, and relentless dedication to the sport.

For The Win

Trail Runner Yao Miao Is Running Down New Goals With ACG

“Get that cool out of you.”It was an early September practice during Madison Booker’s freshman season at the University of Texas, Austin. The team’s point guard, Rori Harmon, was out with an injury. The 6’1” Madison, a small forward, was asked to play point guard in Rori’s place. There she was, flipping between guard drills and one-on-one post ups, a mental load that’s about as easy to carry as trying to paint a picture while driving a car. She was turning over the ball under pressure. You’re not cut out for college ball, she thought. At the time, Madison considered her game to be patient, measured, cool. She could let the game come to her and still come out okay. That’s when head coach Vic Schaefer barked a line that Madison still thinks about to this day, as she leads a UT program battling for its first national title in 30 years.“This is not the place for cool basketball,” he told her. “Get that cool out of your system.”That cool wasn’t play style — it was her mentality. To win, she needed to be the aggressor.&nbsp;Now in her junior year, after becoming an All-American for the third time, Madison understands how to be that alpha leader on both ends of the floor and still preserve her sense of cool; she has what is possibly the smoothest, coldest midrange game in the country. She can score from anywhere at all three levels. Cool? Yes. Casual? Nowhere close. A lot like her favorite player, Kevin Durant, who recently signed her to be the first NIL athlete to compete under Team KD.&nbsp;Here, we catch up with Madison about her path to becoming one of basketball’s most complete players, from her childhood in Ridgeland, Miss., to the EYBL circuit, to the bright lights of the Big Dance.&nbsp;

The Record: What’s your earliest memory of falling in love with hoops?Madison Booker: When I was in elementary school, I remember waking up early in the morning and shooting in my driveway. My mom would always get on me, saying she didn’t want me to go to school all sweaty and musty [laughs]. I was happy playing all these scenarios in my head with the ball in my hand. Clock winding down, one-on-one. I remember playing that voice I played in my head. I loved the game even back then.TR: You’ve talked before about how your dad was huge in fostering your love for the game.MB: He played for Southern Mississippi in college. He later played overseas. As he got older, he’d play competitive pickup in my hometown. Whenever he wrapped up a game, he always took the time to train me. My time with him became a regular part of my day. Once he got home from work, I’d be standing there at the front door, waiting to play him one-on-one in the driveway.&nbsp;

TR: What difference do you think it makes to have a parent who played at a high level, compared to someone who’s figuring out the game with you?&nbsp;MB: I think they can keep you from overcomplicating what it looks like to be an athlete in your sport. I was a big Boston Celtic fan growing up. My favorite player was Rajon Rondo, who was their point guard. That’s what I wanted to be. And I remember my dad saying to me, “You’re not going to be a point guard. You’re going to be a basketball player.” It was the first thing he ever taught me about basketball.TR: It’s what happens when playing to a specific position actually becomes a barrier.MB: He told me, “Whatever your team needs you to do, you’re going to do it, regardless of the position. If they need you to post up and get boards, you’re going to do it. If they need you to score and pass, you’re going to do it.” It’s one way I try to use my story to help younger players who are trying to fit the mold of a type of player they have in their heads. It’s not about your position. It’s about doing whatever it takes for your team to win games.&nbsp;

TR: You were a three-time All-State player in Ridgeland, Mississippi. Your senior year at Germantown High, you led your team to the state title. You don’t hear many stories these days about players who stick with one school all four years.MB: Yeah, my mom’s a teacher there at the high school.TR: Oh, so you didn’t get any slack, huh?&nbsp;MB: [Laughs] No, I was a student athlete in every sense of the word. It was an understood rule that wherever she’d go to teach, I’d follow her. But after I started showing some promise, she was the one who encouraged me to move out of state to play basketball for another school, to raise my game. But I didn’t want to go to another place. I loved my community. I also wanted to put the state on my back. We have some dogs here in Mississippi for girls' basketball. I wanted to prove to people what we were capable of, and I could do that by staying loyal to my state.&nbsp;Making that state title run as a senior was incredible. I found this — I don’t know what to call it — almost like a takeover mode in all facets of the game. The self-belief we carried as a team was crazy. It was like, we weren’t going to lose, period.&nbsp;TR: I want to stay on that “takeover mode.” There had to have been a moment when you realized you were a level above everyone else. Was it when you were in middle school? Was it when you played for the Southern Starz in EYBL?MB: I actually thought I was complete trash until I got to college.&nbsp;TR: You serious? You know how crazy that sounds, right?MB: I know. Through high school and AAU, I always felt I was clumsy, like I couldn’t control my own body, like I didn’t know who I was. My IQ was there, which was the clearest jump when you go from high school to AAU. Most everyone has a love for the game, they watch the game at a high level, and they can process the game a cut above their teammates. Where I was lacking was more an assertion thing. I wasn’t taking over or being dominant in the way I needed to be. I was passive. The turning point probably came in the Augusta EYBL stop in 2021. I was in ninth grade. I remember because it came right after Covid, and it was the first time they combined the men’s and women’s teams in the same building. I remember having zero hesitations about what I needed to do to take over. Score, pass, defend. I could do it all. But it’s funny, because people bring up my midrange game as if I was born with it, but I didn’t really unlock it until I got to college.TR: It’s interesting, because your game is so smooth, it’s like you’ve never had any doubt about the levels to it. The first thing people say when they see your pull-up jumper is, “That’s so pure.” But if I’m hearing you right, it took you a while to believe that.&nbsp;MB: I’ve come to see myself as a player who’s always changing. I think my coaches would say I’m changing too. You don’t end your college career as the same player you were in high school. The change over time in how you perceive yourself is a good thing.TR: You’re officially the first NIL player who KD has handpicked to represent his KD brand. On that note of how you see your game, what are some of the qualities you see in him that you want to carry on? Beyond the literal similarities, like your middy game.MB: His game is so…complete. Of course, he’s a nonchalant guy, but in his game, there are no gaps. And his accomplishments are driven by a pure love for basketball, the kind that we can all remember having when we were kids. He watches a ton of women’s hoops. Whenever I talk with him, I can just tell he studies the game. He lives it. I want to honor a love for the game in the same way he has.TR: When you think about your legacy at UT, what do you think will be the clearest indicator that you loved the game?MB: That it’s a work in progress, every day. When I think of an accomplishment, it’s bringing UT a national championship. I want to give as much as possible back to this program after all they’ve invested in me. They’ve supported me each step of the way. A national title would really seal the deal.&nbsp;

UT’s All-American forward can play any position you throw at her. But it’s her mentality that sets her apart.

Basketball

In Learning to Do It All, Madison Booker Looks to Win It All

There’s a season for everything. For Sophia Wilson, the all-league forward on the NWSL’s Portland Thorns, her journey to the pitch also included basketball. She started on her varsity team as a freshman at Fossil Ridge High School in Colorado, enjoying a sport that has deep ties to her family; her dad played at the University of Wyoming, and her older sister Savannah remains the all-time leading scorer at the University of Northern Colorado. Still, as much as Sophia enjoyed the court, soccer felt different to her: She felt freer and more creative when she played on the pitch. She turned the page on basketball in high school.Since then, she’s channeled her relentless competitive drive toward becoming one of the world’s most elite soccer forwards. You’d need a pushpin map to keep track of the places she’s brought her winning ways to, places like Denver, Palo Alto and Portland. How has she taken the unfolding of her career? One season at a time.Below, in her own words, Sophia shares more about her formative years as a young athlete, the concept of seasonality as a pro player, and her new season of life as a parent.&nbsp; As a kid, I don’t know of a specific moment when I knew I had a talent for soccer, but I do remember right when I started that I felt more comfortable doing it than the people around me.&nbsp;I ran track. I did gymnastics when I was little. I played basketball and volleyball. I honestly really loved every sport I played. But I think it goes back to feeling the most comfortable in myself playing soccer.Watching family play can be the best introduction to sport.&nbsp;I have two older sisters who played soccer growing up, so I was always going to their games, watching them play. I tried out for a team as soon as I was old enough and fell in love with it right away. I felt good about challenging myself at a really early age when I would play up in age groups. It was then when I realized I was a few steps ahead of other people, and I felt like soccer could be special for me.Parents have just as much influence on your development as coaches do.&nbsp;My parents were always confident in me, supporting me in anything I wanted to do, like when I wanted to play up in age groups or play with the boys. My dad would always tell me, “Never let anyone or anything take your confidence away.” I feel like that applies to not just athletes but everyone. There will always be times where people question you, question what you bring to the table. If you remain confident in who you are, you can do anything.

As a club player, sometimes success isn’t just about talent.&nbsp;Sometimes it’s about being seen. I started playing for Real Colorado when I was 14. I made that move because Real is one of the best clubs in Colorado, and they’re in a league that goes to showcases, and that’s where college coaches go to scout players. I knew that if I wanted to keep getting to the next level, I would need to play in a league where you’re seen. Moving to Real is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I learned so much about the game and about myself.A pro career is a 12-month-long season in the sense that every part of the year amounts to a specific goal.&nbsp;The year is long, going from March to November. We have a very short off season from end of November through December, and then we start back again in January. Mixed within that is national team camps once a month. And then, during specific years, you’ll have a global tournament It’s go, go, go nonstop.&nbsp;There’s nothing like your home crowd. I’ve played in a lot of stadiums and in front of a lot of fan bases, and there’s really no place like Portland.&nbsp;What separates this fan base from the rest is that you hear the support of every single fan during every single game, even if it’s pouring rain, The atmosphere is contagious. You don’t want the matches to end. Representing Portland is special, trying to give back in any way I can to the fan base that has given me so much.&nbsp;Parenthood and being a pro aren’t mutually exclusive.&nbsp;This season, I get to return to doing a sport I love while also having a little best friend in my daughter. Parenthood is challenging in its own ways. Obviously, you’re coming off a year being away from the game. Your body went through so many changes. Physically, you’re trying to get back to playing at a high level. It’s been hard work, but I love the process of it, honestly, and I'm excited to see it pay off when I get to play in my first game back.I’m in a season of my career where I understand how every little interaction I have with fans is significant.&nbsp;I have so many interactions with young fans, little girls and boys, and I see how much we inspire them to work hard for their goals. One of the best parts about my job is that you get to inspire all these fans in different ways, encouraging them that they can reach their goals too.&nbsp;

As the NWSL season kicks off, the all-league forward and Team USA star shares what’s shaped her pro football career so far, and what she wants next.

Global Football

A New NWSL Season, a New Sophia Wilson

On May 9, 2025, in the 74th minute of play, Savy King folded onto her back, heaving deep breaths. It was a regular-season game pitting her LA-based Angel City FC squad against the Utah Royals. Medical teams gave her chest compressions and CPR for 10 minutes, then she was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, stabilized and responsive. She had narrowly survived an episode of cardiac arrest. She underwent open heart surgery four days later to treat what doctors concluded was the cause of the scare, a rare congenital heart abnormality.Last month, the NWSL defender returned to training with her team for the first time. In Savy’s life, nothing — not a freak health incident, not a corner kick beaming like a laser toward the goal — has pushed her off course. Her rise as one of the world’s most talented defenders has brought her back to her hometown of Los Angeles.We caught up with Savy from her home in LA and asked about her full-circle return to the City of Angels. The Record: When did you realize you had a real talent for soccer?&nbsp;Savy King: During my first year playing rec center ball, coaches would walk up to my parents and say, “Are you sure this is the first time that Savy’s ever played?” The crazy thing was, no one in my family had ever played soccer before. My parents didn’t know much about the game at that point, so they were just being honest when they said I had never played. They didn’t even know what offside was. I scored an unreal number of goals my first season, around 10 years old, and I ended up getting scouted immediately to play for a club, which was Real So Cal, based in Woodland Hills. I’ve always felt confident and comfortable with the game. But it was a few years later, when I was about 13 or 14, when it clicked for me that I could turn soccer into my future.&nbsp;TR: Ten years old is pretty late for picking up soccer. But you come from an athletic family, so maybe it was just a matter of finding the right sport?&nbsp;SK: My twin brother and I did every sport together. Flag football was first, then baseball, then basketball camps. I have two moms, and one of them played basketball in college, and the other was a professional runner and cyclist, so they both knew the amount of work it took to be a pro athlete. They put me and my brother through intense workouts at a young age, which I think helped us develop as athletes, especially on the mental side. Early on, I learned a kind of emotional maturity, how to navigate the ups and downs of being an athlete. But there was a lot of competitive pushing in our family, and we ultimately found our own thing. It was soccer for me. For my brother, that’s running.TR: You set a couple of track and field records at Agoura High School.SK: Yeah, in the 200-meter and the 400-meter.&nbsp;TR: When you’re playing sports alongside a brother or sister who’s close in age, sometimes there’s this unspoken feeling to occupy your own lane in your specialty sport instead of drafting off something that your siblings are doing. Was that the case for you?SK: Yeah, I think there was some of that. But it was more of a pull toward soccer, less of finding something different from my brother. I had a love-hate relationship with track [laughs]. In high school, I didn’t need to train for it, I would just go out and race. It’s an interesting time at that age to be discovering new sports when I found all this success in something I wasn’t training for.&nbsp;

TR: Luckily running is at the center of so many other sports. You weren’t doing wildly different things.SK: When I’d race against my brother, I’d get excited thinking how it would translate to all that speed on the soccer field [laughs].&nbsp;TR: What was your transition like into club soccer? The club scene for any sport, but especially soccer, is brutal. The schedule is grueling compared to a typical high school calendar, when you’re playing maybe three months out of the year.SK: When both me and my parents were new to the sport, it was definitely nerve-wracking. We were all learning as we went along. I mean, Southern California is one of the best areas for soccer in the country.&nbsp;I was playing against a lot of girls who had been playing since they were little, who’d known each other and had been used to the club schedule for longer than me. Once you decide you want to enter that level of competition, though, the sacrifice of your time is a choice that you have to make. You have to decide if that’s something you want to pursue, because there are trade-offs. TR: For you and your whole family, I’m sure.SK: Countless hours at the field, countless drives for practices. Every weekend was pretty much taken up with games, and this was on top of training for at least four days during the week. Soccer can easily become your lifestyle. I was ready for it, my parents were ready for it, but it was a choice.&nbsp;

TR: Your path across the country has given you a look at different soccer cultures nationwide. You went to UNC to play for a storied program, and you got a taste of ACC soccer.&nbsp;SK: Growing up in SoCal was a great place to prepare for competition all over the country. There was never an easy game in SoCal. I didn’t ever remember teams having this wide gap of talent from one team to another. That’s exactly how it felt in the ACC. It’s one of the best conferences in the country. Every game was a battle. Going in as a freshman, I felt confident because of how LA prepared me.&nbsp;TR: You probably start to pick up on how different areas of the country play the game. Like, when you traveled overseas for international play, did you see little differences in how national teams play?SK: A lot of teams like Japan and Spain, I’ve found to be very technical. Those are the hardest kind of teams I’ve found to play against. Some teams are more direct, like Nigeria. Germany is very physical. The U.S. is a nice mixture of technique and physicality.&nbsp;TR: You’ve had the chance over your career to play with clubs that are characterized by their togetherness. You think about U.S. Soccer, but then you think about a legacy program like UNC, and now for Angel City, you’re building a new culture of togetherness for a pretty new team.&nbsp;SK: The USA team we had during the U20 tournament in Columbia was one of my standout international experiences because of how unified we all were. We essentially played three 120-minute matches back to back to back, and every single game was a battle. It was crazy. It took blood, sweat and tears to pull out a bronze medal.&nbsp;That culture to do whatever it takes is superimportant. Everyone on that squad put the team before themselves. You need people who want to be as great of teammates as they are individuals. And that starts with relationships off the field, getting to know them, connecting with them, strengthening ties with them. We’re around our teammates more than our own families. For people who aren’t from LA, it’s easy to feel alone in a brand-new, huge city. I want to be the kind of leader who’s there for my teammates who feel like outsiders to LA.TR: What does it mean to you to be back training with Angel City again?&nbsp;SK: It means the world. It’s been a crazy journey trying to get back here. I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me eight months ago that I’d be playing again so soon after having open heart surgery. I learned it was hard for me in knowing how much my scare affected other people, like my family, my friends, my teammates. It eases my mind knowing that the people I love can see me back out on the pitch again, because there are only so many ways I can verbalize that I feel great. Them seeing me play is the proof.&nbsp;TR: Do you feel like your experience has added to your definition of what success looks like? For someone as competitive as you, there’s the literal winning at the highest level, like winning a title, winning gold — all of those are still true. But hearing you talk, you seem to care just as much about the person who was influenced deeply by your story.&nbsp;SK: Success and gratification are closely connected for me now. I’m so thankful that I’m even here, alive. When you’re an athlete, it’s easy to take wins and victories for granted. You can get lost in the routine of what’s turned into a career. The thing you used to be happy about, winning, can turn into complacency. Now that I’m back, success is much more broad. If your happiness is only being determined by the big wins you want to accomplish, you miss out on the little things that make the journey so special.&nbsp;

The Angel City FC Defender is back on the pitch after surviving an episode of cardiac arrest. Today, she’s playing for more than a zip code.

Savy King Is Playing for a Bigger Team Now

Learn What Drives Our Athletes

Story Landing

3-Minute Portrait

Emma Hayes 3-Minute Portrait

Emma Hayes Tells You How to Succeed in Sports

3-Minute Portrait Alysa Liu

Alysa Liu’s Best Advice for Sports and Life

3-Minute Portrait Juju Watkins

JuJu Watkins On Her Natural Competitive Advantage

A globally ranked fencer. A chart-topping performer. An accomplished designer and creative director. Jackson Wang’s career follows a broad range of personal interests and passions. But if you ask him, it's rooted in the consistent belief that all of life, including sport and art, is a performance. And performance doesn’t mean anything until you get to work, stand on the stage and prove yourself. Our thoughts exactly.&nbsp;His affinities as an artist and athlete make the 30-year-old Chinese native a natural partner with the Nike &amp; Jordan Brand family, which he officially joined this month. We talked with Jackson about the lessons he’s brought from different phases of his career, how failure feeds creativity, and what he’s most excited for in working alongside Nike &amp; Jordan Brand.&nbsp;&nbsp;What’s your defining Nike &amp; Jordan Brand memory?When I was growing up, it was less of a memory and more of an attitude. There was no nonsense to it: Stop talking and Just Do It. It was very straightforward, but at the same time, it felt right and it made sense to me. The reality is, as an athlete and an artist, people evaluate you based on what you create. You can have all of these ideas going around in your head, but ultimately, you need to take action. You need to just do it — perform, play, create.&nbsp;What are the essential qualities you had as an athlete?I grew up in a family full of athletes. My mom was a national team gymnast, my dad was a national team fencer and my brother plays rugby in Australia, so I was surrounded by sport at a young age. Interestingly, when I was competing as a young fencer, I felt like I was on a stage performing. It made my transition to becoming an artist very natural. I’ve always been motivated by making a statement in a performative sense. Of course, I’ve always been a competitive person, too. I’m always looking to improve.Growing up surrounded by athletes, I was taught that embracing failure is a normal part of the athlete mindset; success is a bonus. You’re bound to fail, but the more you bounce back and learn from your mistakes, the more you grow. There’s a Cantonese phrase that says, essentially, that nothing is more normal than failure. What’s important is how you respond to failure.&nbsp;

What are the commonalities you see in your backgrounds as an athlete and an entertainer?I see a lot of similarities between the two. Having an athletic mindset in the realm of entertainment and creativity means just keeping at it. Like I said, failure is okay. It should be an everyday occurrence. What I can’t tolerate in my craft isn’t failure. It’s being stagnant, being ordinary, being boring. In my opinion, that doesn’t get you anywhere, not in art, and not in athletics.&nbsp;But you have to stay open to growth while also remaining true to who you are. That’s partly why Jordan Brand means so much to me personally. The brand represents more of a spirit to me: It’s about knowing yourself, always remaining true to it. Whether you fail or whether you succeed, are you strong enough to hold onto your core values when your environment changes? Jordan Brand stands for staying true to your identity as an athlete, an artist and a person.What’s your most memorable Nike / Jordan shoe or piece of apparel?I forgot how old I was, but a friend on my fencing team bought me my first pair of all-white Air Force 1 shoes for my birthday. It was the first birthday gift I received that made me cry. I had dreamed of those shoes for a long time. Everyone was wearing it. The shoe looked good with everything. But I didn’t have the money to buy it, and it was too much to ask my parents to get it for me. One of the seniors on the fencing team knew that I wanted the shoe so badly, he surprised me with it.What are you most looking forward to in partnering alongside Nike &amp; Jordan?&nbsp;I’m so grateful that I get to join the Nike &amp; Jordan family as an partner. I started off as an athlete, then became a member of a K-Pop band, had a solo career, and then began exploring other creative projects. With each of these phases, for better or worse, people attach a certain label on you. You’re&nbsp;only&nbsp;an athlete, or you’re&nbsp;only an artist. That’s precisely why I love Nike &amp; Jordan Brand giving me this opportunity. It’s like they’re saying to me, “Here’s a playground. Go and play. Spread your wings and be free creatively.” They’re embracing me as both a partner and an athlete. It goes back to the identity thing. Nike &amp; Jordan let me be true to who I am.

We sit down with the multidisciplinary star as he officially joins the Nike & Jordan Brand family.

Welcome to the Family

5 Questions with Record-Setting Artist Jackson Wang

Lungs burning. Legs aching. Mud flying. Heart racing. On December 7, more than 400 of the top male and female high school distance runners in the country traveled to Portland, Ore., for the premier cross country meet in the United States: Nike Cross Nationals.

Four talented sport creatives — photographers <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.instagram.com/d3.photography_/" target="_blank">Don Smalls III</a>, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.instagram.com/isojordin/" target="_blank">Jordin De La Rosa</a> and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.instagram.com/ybbbor/" target="_blank">Robby Zacharias</a> and curator <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.instagram.com/connorsurdi/" target="_blank">Connor Surdi</a> — were given unprecedented access on race day to capture the unfiltered emotion of cross country racing. Many of their photographs offer a first look at the sport’s next elite pros, who will be competing for future national records, international titles and gold medals.Cheering on the racers were many of running's brightest stars, some of whom competed in Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) themselves. “NXN is bigger than one race,” says Cole Hocker, a Nike athlete and the 2024 gold medalist in the men’s 1,500-meter. “When I ran it, NXN opened my eyes to what was possible for me in the sport. Six years later, on the pro side, I can see how transformative the experience is for young runners. It teaches them to dream big and see their full potential. That’s why it’s so exciting to be here supporting them.”

On December 7, weather conditions were creating a trademark winter morning in Portland, Ore.: Temperatures were in the low to mid 40s, set in an overcast sky with constant rain flurries. The grounds of Glendoveer Golf Course became a mud pit overnight. But if you’re a serious cross country runner, you take a kind of masochistic pleasure when the conditions are stacked against you.The hundreds of runners, made up of individual and club qualifiers from eight regional championships across the U.S., shook out their morning legs in their warm-ups, logging an easy mile or two across the grounds, the fog lifting.Soon, it was time to race. They toed the starting line. The gun sounded. The pack was off and running.

The 5K course was a flood of mud-soaked singlets, each color representing a different regional champion. A team sport, powered by the individual will to win. A solo performance that ultimately ladders up to group success, by runners who form the broader and future portrait of American distance running. The sport offers a beautiful mix of dichotomies. Of course, they amount to a common theme: elite competition.“NXN taught me the power of competition and provided me the opportunity to compete against the best in the country,” says Elise Cranny, a Nike athlete and the current national record holder in the women’s indoor 5,000-meter. “NXN completely changed the trajectory of my running career. Now that I’m into my professional career, NXN gives me the chance to help inspire this next generation of runners and show them what’s possible for their own futures. They energize me and remind me why I love this brand and this sport so much.”

If the slick conditions were meant to be a stumbling block, the competitors didn’t know it. The winning team on the men’s side, Niwot High (Colorado), put together one of the best team performances in the history of NXN, tallying an impressive 70 total score. The women’s individual champion, Jane Hedengren, a senior from Timpview, Utah, broke the course record and won by a stunning 41 seconds. For the hundreds of runners who crossed the finish line, their legs burning as they collapsed into the mud, their performances weren’t a finish line at all, but a new starting line: the beginning of their next competitive chapter.“NXN was more than just a race for me,” says Charles Hicks, a Nike athlete and former collegiate XC champion. “It was the pinnacle we could build our season around, something we could conquer together, and an experience we’ll share for the rest of our lives.”In a sit-down Q&amp;A with the young runners, Cole Hocker recounted how it felt to be in their shoes six years ago, listening to Nike medalists and record holders who had just competed at the sport’s biggest stage in Brazil.“I remember sitting exactly where you guys are,” he told the runners. “Hearing those pros talk up on stage, I made it my goal to get to where they were. I adopted this mindset to race every race like it was my last, like my life depended on it. If being great is your goal, that’s the only way to do it.”

Nike Cross Nationals 2024

Rain. Mud. The best of the best. Nike Cross Nationals is where our future distance heroes are born.

In It for the Long Run: Behind the Scenes of High School’s Most Competitive Race

The connection between what we wear and how we look and feel is undeniable; the relationship has the potential to bring power, confidence, poise, tenacity.&nbsp; That connection is no different if you’re a young athlete. The way you wear your hair, the personal tweaks you give to your uniform or your pre-game routine, the feeling you get when you just see your jersey — all of these details reinforce your persona, on and off the field. This is no truer than for the future icons of sport, standout athletes who aren’t waiting to be told how to look, dress or go after their goals. Here, five of Nike’s up-and-coming athletes share what makes them feel and look their best for their sport.&nbsp;

<h3>LESS REALLY IS MORE</h3>Maddy Elmore Track and field, University of Oregon “In the summer, I like wearing just a sports bra and tight-fitting clothes — as little clothing as possible. We warm up in this rain jacket that is huge on me, but when I take it off to race, there’s a real transition in how I feel. With less on, I feel more free.&nbsp;My kit has changed as I’ve progressed. I always thought buns would be super uncomfortable, but now I love them. When I put them on and I'm doing my strides before a race, I feel good. I used to have lucky socks and all those things, but now that I've gotten older I tell myself, this is just another day. If everything's not perfect right before a race, it’s okay, because I do this every day in practice.I'm from Eugene, I was born and raised here, so the Oregon kit is very meaningful to me. When I was younger I would go to watch all the meets at Hayward Field. Now, I wear the same kit as athletes I always looked up to, and I take a lot of pride in that.”

<h3>THE RITUALS MATTER</h3>Jaiden Rodriguez Soccer midfielder, USA National Team“It's always an honor to step onto the field, but playing for the National team is something else. We always talk about ‘borrowing the jersey’ — it's not yours until you're on the senior team. On youth teams, you're borrowing the number. It is a privilege even to step in the locker room. &nbsp;There are different personalities and different rituals for the team. It's all over the place until the end, when we come together before we head out onto the field. I don’t know if it’s a superstition, but I always hold my shin guards in my hand while I warm up. I like being light on my feet when I get my touches in. Then, when we go into contact, I put them on, pull my socks up, and I’m ready to go.”

<h3>THE BEST LOOK IS A REAL LOOK</h3>Simone Jackson Soccer forward, University of Southern California“Jerseys mean so much to me. I have the one from my U20 Women's World Cup team framed, and it's a constant reminder to dream big. I also feel like jerseys play a big part when I'm supporting. I vividly remember going to the Women's World Cup final in Lyon — my family and I were fully decked out. When you're there and you get the jersey, you're almost one with the team. It's just 10 times better. So, if I go to a game, I get the jersey. On game day, I am big on my hair. In Black hair culture, sometimes you feel like you have to add or straighten. I'm a natural-hair girl, because I think you don't necessarily have to do something to feel red carpet-ready. When I play, I wear my hair in its most natural, curly state. I want to let all the little girls that look like me know that your best look can be your most natural look, so my hair is super big, as poofy as possible. I don't really do makeup. I brush my teeth and smile big. Maybe I’ll do my edges, if I'm feeling a little extra. Football is obviously a team sport, and I've always been big on looking uniform with the team. At USC, we don't do last names on the back of the jersey, and I like the fact that it's team before self. We have our team mantra on the back, ‘we over me’. But off the pitch, I want to be the most unique. Even if we have the same thing, I want to dress it up differently, turn a head or two. I like bright colors, clothes that are fun, yet simple. I make every day a fit day; I'm not afraid to go to class looking fitted.”

<h3>DRESS FOR THE ENERGY YOU WANT</h3>Kiara Romero Golf, University of Oregon “I like to dress up when I play. I want to feel good out there. I’ll curl my hair, wear ribbons, and do a little bit of makeup. I like that tennis vibe some players have — kind of country club. I usually go with a skirt and a light top, a pullover or a long sleeve. Most of the time I keep the colors subtle, then some days I’ll feel it out. If it’s a nice, easy day, I'll take it easy with the color. If I feel like I need to play more aggressively, I’ll go with a brighter color to match that energy. I always match the color of my shirt with the Sharpie I use on my golf ball. Golf balls all look the same, and you don't want to accidentally hit someone else’s, so everyone marks their ball. I have like, eight sharpies in my golf bag. Actually, there’s a lot of stuff in there. Golf gloves get a lot of attention. I do this thing where I don't close the glove completely, it just kind of hangs open. When I get nervous, my hands get a little sweaty. The gloves are looser that way, less restricted, and I like a bit of airflow in there.”

<h3>FIND YOUR VISUAL REMINDER</h3>Scottie Antonucci Soccer midfielder, USA National Team“I remember when I first put on the crest for the national team. I was at my first camp and I went to the equipment manager to pick up my stuff, and when I looked down at the crest in my hands, I was like, this is a little weird. This is what Alex Morgan wears. This is what Carli Lloyd wears. This kit is worn by all these players, and now it's in my hands. Knowing that I'm playing for something more than myself is extremely important to me. When I'm feeling down or I know I've got to keep pushing through, I'll look down at my crest. I'll even tap on it sometimes. It reminds you that you're playing for something that all these players before you did too — men and women that you've always looked up to. Now, you play a small part in that. That's what really motivates me on the field.”

Learn more about Nike’s 50 years of advancing women’s sportswear and women’s sport in the new book “<a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/look-good-feel-good-play-good-nike-apparel" rel="noopener noreferrer">Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good: Nike Apparel</a>,” which charts a visual history of the relationship between women and the garments they wear.

Makeup. Hair. What it feels like to wear the kit, the jersey, the gear. Five up-and-coming Nike women athletes explain why these details matter — and how they bring power to their game.

Feature

“The Better I Look and Feel, the Better I Play”

A’ja Wilson was at a crossroads. In 2023, the Las Vegas Aces forward was a two-time MVP, and she had reached the WNBA Finals for a second time. Her team was up 2-0 in the series. They could imagine the confetti falling. But self-doubt has no regard for the scoreboard. The Aces were short a few players due to injury. They had just lost Game 3. Suddenly, A’ja was staring down a different opponent: the negative, nagging self-talk, whispering to A’ja that she was in trouble.

A'ja Wilson on Self Doubt

A’ja Wilson on Facing Self Doubt

Learning that one of basketball’s most confident stars is vulnerable to the same crippling self-talk as any one of us might be surprising. But doubt often takes the form of cheap lies, and during certain moments, A’ja has heard them too: I haven’t worked hard enough. I’m not doing enough. The competition is better than I am. Early in A’ja’s career, her mind would drift to thinking about her opponent’s strengths, not her own. Now that she’s more experienced, she filters the dark mental chatter through a different lens: Are the critiques I’m making actually true? When she confronts the negative talk honestly, she reminds herself of all that she’s accomplished, which is no short list. The premise is the same for the rest of us: Reflect on all that you’ve done to prepare you for this moment. What did she remind herself of during that critical Game 4? That she was a freakin’ MVP. Once her confidence took over, the rest took care of itself.“Sometimes I wish people could see the game through my eyes, because they’d say, ‘A’ja, how are you even successful?’” A’ja laughs. “Like, I don’t see a face or a jersey. I just see a body. I’m out there thinking, how can I out-skill this body? Okay, they didn’t go for that fake, gotta try something else. That’s when the game starts to be fun: When you’re not dissecting your mind anymore, and you’re dissecting your opponent instead.”

The mantras that help A’ja fight through the mental noise are true team efforts. Important figures in her life, like her head coaches, all fierce competitors themselves, helped her transform negative self-talk into motivational fuel. But they didn’t coddle her. She remembers a practice at South Carolina where she was removed from an intrasquad scrimmage by her coach, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/dawn-staley-2-minute-pep-talk" target="null">Dawn Staley</a>. Her coach’s mantra was a hard look in the mirror: Never blend.Not meant to disparage her game, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/a-ja-wilson-and-dawn-staley-on-their-coach-player-bond" target="null">the comment was reminding A’ja of her potential</a>. You’re so talented, you should always stand out.“Comments like that are what get my motor running,” says A’ja. “Prove to me what I’m doing wrong so I can prove to you I can do it right.”

One voice that’s been a constant in A’ja’s life comes from her late grandmother, Hattie. Her phrase, The best is yet to come, has helped lift A’ja through some of her most challenging moments, like when she fought an episode of depression following the Covid pandemic. The self-doubt was wrecking her. Meanwhile, her fame was soaring. Her statue had just been revealed on campus in Columbia, S.C., memorializing her career on the same grounds where her grandmother was denied access generations ago. The best is yet to come, she could hear Hattie tell her. Positive self-talk comes from the positive forces in one’s life. Find those positive voices, says A’ja. Block out the rest.

A'ja Wilson on the Power of Positive Thinking

A’ja Wilson on the Power of Positive Thinking

The three-time league MVP and two-time league champion explains how to psych yourself up when the negative mental chatter gets loud.

Fan 101

A'ja Wilson on How Pros Overcome Self-Doubt

Much of an elite distance runner’s season hinges on the unseen training sessions that happen outside of their competitive window, which is typically late spring to early fall. If anyone had five competitive months that were worth boasting about this year, it was Jess Hull. The Australian middle-distance runner took silver in the 1500m in Paris. She set the Australian national record in the 1500m and the world record in the 2,000m. And indoors, she set national records in the 1500, the mile and the 3000m.The off-season is here for Hull, and so are her critical hours of offseason work. Resisting the urge to pump more, more, more in the training plan — especially coming off a year of records and PRs — is easier said than done. But experience has taught Hull to carefully tend to every facet of her athletic self before she hits the track again. Here, she shares four lessons she’s learned to stay healthy and get stronger and faster.Start a workout journal"My training logs are crucial to my progress. I write down my specific workouts, but also how my body felt doing them. Then I’m able to reflect as my season goes on about the areas in which I see I’m getting stronger. In a weight training workout, for example, I might be able to get six reps in a session and it feels challenging, then three weeks later that same session comes back and I get eight reps and my body feels great. Logs give me the ability to acknowledge the efforts that make me strong and keep me strong."Try practicing a new distance"The off-season gives you the opportunity to listen to your body while training in new ways. For me, that means focusing on the 3,000m. Choosing a specific, different distance to train helps me keep a baseline of fitness, and I’m not overtraining at my specialty [the 1500m] heading into the next season. Plus, the technique needed for a different distance can help you improve in your specialty. For example, I don’t want to come out too fast in the 1500, so mixing my training with the 3,000 reminds me to start out at a more manageable pace. Focusing on a different distance can help you make those smarter decisions."

Jess Hull Hill Session

Experiment with terrain"I try to stay off the track until January, which is one of the luxuries of being in Australia. We have a variety of surfaces to train on, whether that’s trail, sand or grass. Running on grass is one of my unspoken rules in the off-season. Your splits in those sessions might not measure up to what you’re used to, but that’s okay. The point is to give your body a break. I also like how training on a softer surface targets different muscles. I feel stronger at the end of a grass training period."Listen to your body’s cues"Whether you’re prepping for the Olympics or a local 5k, you mentally prepare your body differently based on the stakes of the moment. In Paris, I went into the medal race thinking I’d do my traditional warmup — an easy 5K distance about an hour out from the start of the race. I warmed up for about 12 minutes that day and thought to myself, “I’m done. Anything more is too much.” And I respected what my body told me."

Jess Hull Easy Run

Olympian Jess Hull follows four rules that can help you run stronger and faster too.

How A Pro Runner Stays Fit in the Off-Season

In Sabrina Ionescu’s career, the question is not if the game-winning shot will happen, it‘s how. There was the 2017 game-winner as a college freshman against Cal, nicknamed “the Heave at Haas,” when Sabrina made a direct line past half court, caught the inbounds pass on the run, and sank a contested three-pointer at the buzzer. In 2021, in the guard’s season-opener with the New York Liberty, she curled around a dribble hand-off on the left wing; caught the ball at her hip; and, in one improbably continuous motion, rose up for a game-winning three to defeat the Indiana Fever. Then there’s the shot heard ’round the world: Game 3 of the 2024 Finals, where she silenced nearly 20,000 fans in Minneapolis with a three-point dagger from 28 feet.&nbsp;The magic of the game-winner isn’t accidental, says Sabrina, but the product of hours of practice, visualization and imagination. They might not know it yet, but the young player, in dribbling down the clock at their driveway hoop, is improvising their moment of immortality with a game-winning shot, sealing the win.

Sabrina Ionescu on the Magic of the Game-Winner

Sabrina on the Magic of the Game-Winner

Game-winners can go down in a variety of in-game situations. For Sabrina’s Game 3 shot, the Liberty had one important variable on their side: time.&nbsp;“We had enough time on the clock that we were able to slow down and read the defense,” says Sabrina. “We knew we were sending up JJ [Liberty forward Jonquel Jones] for a ghost screen and then have her slip out to create some confusion. And then, after reacting how they played me, it just became me and the basket — I had enough space after that step back to get my shot off.”

From Imagination to Reality: Sabrina Ionescu on Her Game 3 Shot

Sabrina on her Game 3 Shot

Every game-winning shot is special in its own right, says Sabrina.“You miss more of those attempts than you make, so you hold onto every game-winning moment when they happen.”

Maybe you practiced it for hours in the driveway as a kid. Here, the WNBA champion shares how a perfect swoosh really goes down.

<h3>Any conversation about women in golf inevitably includes Michelle Wie-West. A phenom who picked up clubs at age 4, Michelle is a force on the greens. She was the youngest player ever to make the cut for the US Women’s Open at 13. She signed with Nike at age 15. And as a teenager, she famously fought for women's sports equality to play alongside men on the PGA circuit, debuting at an early season open in 2004 with a second-round 68 that still claims the record for the lowest PGA round by a woman.</h3><h3>Michelle went on to win the US Women’s Open and five more events on the LPGA tour. Last year, she retired from her professional golf career, earning a standing ovation as she sank her putt on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach. She’d set her mind to a new goal: Growing her family. Michelle and her husband, Jonnie West, had a daughter, Makenna, in 2020, and wanted a second child — but the couple hit heartbreaking obstacles, including pregnancy loss and a difficult IVF journey.</h3><h3>Finding strength to get through hard moments is something Michelle says she’s always tapped into as an athlete. It’s those same athlete-minded traits — perseverance, dedication, passion — that she wants to instill in her daughter, and as of this past October, her new baby boy, Jagger Jerry Yoojun West.</h3><h3>Here, Michelle shares what victories look like to her now, the joy she’s found in working with Nike on products for women and mothers, and what’s next for her in sports. </h3>

To get through IVF, I drew from my experience in hardship and adversity as a professional athlete. Especially the physical aspects. As a professional golfer, I had to learn how to keep my stamina up, keep my body strong, and that helped me steel myself through the injections, the bruising. Of course, it’s not a complete one to one but I found there were many similarities to sports. You can try too hard, get frustrated, and feel stuck. I’ve learned in both that sometimes you have to let the process take over.When I think about pregnancy now, I think about it like training for a major. When I got pregnant with my first child, it was during Covid, and it happened so easily that I didn’t even think about it. Getting pregnant the second time was completely different. It didn’t come as easily. I paid more attention to preparing my body for birth. I worked with a nutritionist on an eating plan. While I couldn’t really work out too much, I was mindful about movement like walking. And I was more intentional on managing my energy levels, and my emotions as well.

Michelle Wie-West IVF

As a mom, I absolutely channel the mental training I developed as a golfer. When I’m tired, when my toddler’s crying, I tell myself to take a deep breath and not auto-react. It's like hitting a really bad shot on the green and just not letting it get to you. And just like in sports, leaning on other people is crucial too. Making sure I involve my partner, and not trying to do everything myself, not trying to be that super mom or guilt myself into that. And then sometimes I’ll just text my husband and say “I'm going to get my nails done. Figure it out.”

Being part of the <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-athlete-think-tank-second-cohort" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nike Athlete Think Tank</a> [a collective of women athletes who help advise the brand] has been a such a cool experience. I feel grateful and lucky to be welcomed into that community, and I’ve made so many amazing friends — women ranging from young girls in their teens to fellow moms. It’s been interesting to see that, while we all have different sports backgrounds, we’ve battled many of the same issues and problems. And it’s been fun and meaningful to have input into <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/all-movement-all-moments-our-next-era-of-designing-for-women" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nike women’s products</a> that have come to market, like the <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-leak-protection-period-innovation" rel="noopener noreferrer">Leak Protection Period short</a>, and to see Nike incorporate our suggestions. Part of the work I did with Athlete Think Tank was giving insights for <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-s-new-wearable-pump-compatible-sports-bra-and-easyon-shoe-give-mothers-more-support" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nike’s new Swoosh (M) Bra</a>. This nursing bra allows women to move while they express breast milk, and I’m really excited to try it out. When I was pregnant last time, the technology was just being developed, so this pregnancy I absolutely got a hands-free pump. I think the bra is <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/we-knew-women-needed-this-bra-yesterday" rel="noopener noreferrer">a gamechanger for women</a>. When you're plugged into a wall to pump, you're stuck. To be able to nurse or pump while you're, say, walking on the treadmill, doing something for yourself, is so huge. After having my daughter, I remember I would have to leave the golf course to go pump between shots. I’d have to take a hole off. With this bra, I could pump on the golf cart! It is physical, mental and emotional freedom to not have to be in the corner of a locked room every two and a half hours to pump. And I think products like this can prolong breastfeeding journeys. It’s been fun to see the Nike maternity line expand, to try out different things from the line. I also helped give insights for the Nike (M) apparel, which people think is just for pregnancy and postpartum, but can absolutely be for an IVF journey too. You get so bloated and nothing fits, and that takes a big hit on your psyche when you’re already feeling pretty low. My maternity style this second time around was tighter rib-knit dresses, two-piece sets. I wasn’t afraid to experiment. I wore a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-Vqi9eyJ0-/?hl=en&amp;img_index=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nike Swim two-piece in my third trimester</a> and just sized up. I got the triangle bikini, and it was holding on for dear life. One thing I would love to see more of is people supporting women through pregnancy losses. To talk about that more, and to put supporting loss on par with supporting prepgancy. I think Nike, and all of us, has done a good job of starting to <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/this-is-a-product-that-can-change-people-s-lives" rel="noopener noreferrer">talk about periods and menstrual cycles</a>, to develop products to help support those moments, but I think there's so much more that is involved in the road to motherhood.

The Nike (M) Swoosh Bra has adjustable cups to accommodate wearable breast pumps; proprietary hardware on the straps allows individual strap drop-down for nursing; and the interior lining features Nike Leak Protection: Breast Milk, a special moisture-managing material that helps prevent visible breast milk leaks.

Periods can be a barrier to sport and movement for teens and adults — physically, mentally and emotionally. Knowing this, Nike created Leak Protection: Period, an ultrathin, absorbent liner that helps protect against period leaks to provide extra comfort and confidence. It debuted in the Nike One Leak Protection: Period Short.

Nike has extended its Nike (M) collection, adding a new dress along with refreshed tanks, tops, shorts and tights.

Nike's Expanding Pre- and Postpartum Products

What fueled me as a pro golfer was that obsession to get better, to see how good I could be. That drove me through practice and through training and through the hard times. If I didn’t have that single-minded way of thinking, I felt like I wouldn’t reach my potential. And, when I was out there pushing myself — it was fun. There was nothing more fun than playing great golf, knowing that every shot that you hit is going to be good, the putts are going to drop. And when tough times inevitably hit, you’re just trying to get back to those moments again. Throughout my career that’s what I leaned on, an insatiable desire to be back in those moments. Now, I’ve transferred some of that ambition into my family. My daughter, Makenna, is 4 years old. And I’ve loved seeing the positive impact I can make on her and how she sees the world. You know, when they're younger, you don’t really know what you’re doing, you’re just trying to keep them alive. Now, I can see her trying to emulate me, and I’m focused on being the example I want to set — showing her strong work ethic, how to self-motivate, the power of kindness and empathy. During my golf career, I tried to make bold choices, to not be afraid to fail or make a fool of myself, and those are the values I hope to instill in my daughter, my new baby. And it’s a fun ride. Makenna is just starting sports, and I am introducing her to golf, but also soccer, swimming, and she’s recently gotten into tennis. Really, I'm just her Uber driver at this point. I remember with Makenna, I was on the range 10 days after giving birth. This time I will not be doing that. I definitely want to <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/six-instant-benefits-of-running" rel="noopener noreferrer">get back into running</a>, to do Pilates and strength train and feel strong in my body again. And I still enjoy playing golf! Though tennis is my game at the moment. I’m looking forward to seeing how good I can get at that — and doing it with my daughter.

The golf champion talks about her challenges with IVF and pregnancy, and the model she wants to be for her daughter and new baby.

Michelle Wie-West Is Still Breaking Barriers

When Richard Ramsay was a basketball-obsessed teenager, he remembers how his dad would periodically chase him down the court during games to help him retie his shoelaces. Ramsay was born without his left arm, and while his disability didn’t stop him from excelling in sports like basketball and football, the challenge to complete dexterous tasks like retying a shoelace was real, and it motivated him to study the human body’s interaction with the physical world. He’d go on to study kinesiology at university, compete on his program’s basketball practice squad, and graduate into a footwear-creation career at Nike, where he eventually joined the Universal Ease team in creating more accessible performance products. He’s both a practitioner of and a validator for the gear that makes daily life more useful for all athletes.&nbsp;In the spring of 2022, Nike Lead Equipment Designer Brent Radewald met with Ramsay — now a Senior Footwear Developer — to show him a prototype of a new backpack developed for the brand’s Paralympic athletes ahead of Paris 2024.The goal: Take maybe the most purely functional piece of equipment that exists, the backpack, and make it easy for all athletes to use. Easy to open. Easy to close. Easy to stay secure.

EasyOn Backpack

“A comment we were frequently hearing from adaptive athletes was how difficult it was to open and close traditional backpacks without a high-dexterity anchor point, like a hand,” says Radewald. “If they don’t have full use of both hands, small features like zippers and pull tags can be hard to grip.”Once athletes opened the bag, the contents needed to be accessible from the very top. Someone with low dexterity, like a quadriplegic, can’t easily rummage around the base of their bag and expect to grab what they need. Each component of the bag, down to the circumference of a zipper loop, had to be efficient for athletes of all abilities to use. The product benefits couldn't be particular, but universal. With that in mind, Radewald and his team got to work.

The first step for Radewald’s team was to rethink the traditional opening system. Relying completely on a zipper to close the bag requires the zipper to travel a continuous, winding path from start to finish, which can be challenging for athletes with low motor skills. Radewald and his team brainstormed alternative ways to open the bag.

Radewald began the process of testing different sizes, strengths and orientations of magnets and hook and loop. Eventually, the team landed on a patented magnetic closure system that was backed against a TPU-reinforced lining, using the magnetic pull to “swing” the top flap shut and secure it in place.

“Magnets and hook and loops have different strengths based on the direction of the opening force,” says Radewald. “Magnets have great vertical power in keeping something tight up and down, but they don’t hold up as well to shearing forces, side to side. Hook and loops have nice shearing strength, but less vertical strength. If there was some combination of those elements that we put together, we might have something special.”

By design, the top flap can be opened using one hand when the user applies light force from on top, requiring much lower dexterity than with a traditional backpack.

For added security, a G-hook on the back of the bag loops through the top flap, keeping it sealed tight.

Rethinking the Backpack

The team would develop three more prototypes after rolling out the first EasyOn bag for testing, consulting many of Nike’s product experts, like Ramsay, for their observations. The log book describing the bag’s updates over the course of two years is filled with precise, meticulous changes: Move top zipper pocket by 1.5 centimeters. Make bottle pocket finger loop 2 centimeters wide. Of course, these improvements couldn’t just remain concepts on a product diagram; they had to be practically tested in real conditions that were comparable for athletes with low dexterity. In review sessions, Radewald and his team would attempt to open and close the bag using oven mitts and kitchen utensils like salad tongs. They also held lengthy product feedback conversations with a local wheelchair rugby team, the Portland Pounders.

The beauty of the prototype reviews, says Radewald, was how cosmetic variables like colorways — common to footwear — are secondary to equipment like backpacks. Is this backpack easy for you to use? That’s the simple question they presented to the Pounders. Based on the feedback, all signs were pointing to yes.At the same time, the adaptive athletes’ feedback revealed new opportunities. One of them, echoed by Ramsey during his feedback sessions, was creating a modular strap system.

“Many of the wheelchair athletes we worked with didn’t have a bag that worked well with their wheelchairs,” says Ramsay. “If you didn’t have wheelchair handles that were a standard width, you were out of luck in securing your bag. You’d have to move around with it on your lap.”Patented clasps on the backpack’s straps allow the user to widen or narrow the bag’s fit across wheelchair handlebars, not to mention across the athlete’s shoulders — a helpful feature that Ramsey witnessed when showing the prototype to his brother.“My brother is close to 100 pounds heavier than me, and he adjusted the same EasyOn backpack I have and wear it comfortably,” says Ramsay. “The backpack isn’t just a better bag for disabled athletes. It’s a better bag for everyone.”

This universality is what excites Radewald ahead of <a href="https://www.nike.com/t/elite-easyon-backpack-31l-tt4Q3P/HF7048-060" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the bag’s debut on nike.com this season</a>. Beyond Paralympians,&nbsp;any athlete — from pros to weekend warriors to students — can benefit from a more efficient, more intuitive backpack.“Universal design helps all athletes perform at their best,” says Radewald. “If we can create a better bag for our adaptive athletes, we create a better product for every athlete.”

Originally created for Paralympic athletes, the Nike Elite EasyOn backpack shows how universal design benefits everyone.

Nike Just Made a Better Backpack for Every Body

Are you debating whether to run today? Whether to work out? Whether to set a new, challenging goal that might scare you? Championship coach Dawn Staley has words for you. Take a listen, and make your move.

Coach Staley Motivates You to Make a Move

Dawn Staley was featured in <a href="https://www.instagram.com/citizenmagazine/?hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Citizen Issue 004</a>, themed "Strange World." The issue explores the new and the unknown, the strange moments, and the strange ideas we've encountered, all through the lens of Black women, including actress and cover star Ayo Ediberi, who was photographed in Nike's The Suit.

Dawn Staley portrait by <a href="https://www.justin-french.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Justin French</a>

Follow the voice of NCAA championship coach and three-time Olympic gold medalist Dawn Staley for the motivation you need to train, to focus, to meet your next big goal.

The 2-Minute Pep Talk You Need to Get Moving Right Now

<h3>Loved work is hard work, says sports analyst Monica McNutt. And when it comes to basketball, she’s no stranger to putting the work in. A former Division I athlete, McNutt now covers the NBA, WNBA and women’s college basketball at ESPN and elsewhere, and literally has a front-row seat to the action. What’s it like to witness the triumphant ascendance of a sport she’s lived and loved her whole life? In a word: “Surreal.”&nbsp;</h3><h3>Fresh from the WNBA Finals, McNutt joined us at Nike’s NYHQ, ahead of announcing our <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-nba-wnba-g-league-partnership-extension" rel="noopener noreferrer">historic partnership extension</a> with the NBA, WNBA and NBA G League, to talk hoops, career and fandom. If you’re not already dedicated to the women’s game, you will be after this. Her advice to you? “Pick a city and pull up!”&nbsp; </h3>

I was there for the Liberty’s 2024 Championship win. There for game five. It's the first time that it's a winner-take-all overtime game in the finals in WNBA history. It's the first time that a series has two overtime matchups in the five-game set.To be in that arena, to celebrate with this current iteration of the New York Liberty, and then to turn around and see Liberty legend Teresa Weatherspoon with tears streaming down her face… it was this culmination of the athletes I loved and grew up watching as a young girl in ’97 through the early 2000s, when the league was in its formative years. Fast forward 28 years to 18,000 fans in Barclays Center; Ellie, the Liberty mascot, is an icon; it’s like a super team of sorts. It’s this incredible combination of the past and the present, basically the trailblazers and the players taking it to the next level.&nbsp; When you call a game, you want to educate and entertain. This year, there was definitely more emphasis on educating. Because, yes, it's a bigger audience — we're so glad you're here — but there's some steps and people and names you should know. There’s a dance of how to infuse and capitalize on the energy of the now while paying homage and respect to how we got here.Big-picture conversation? Across society, it's so easy for us to each be in our silos. And it’s easy to think that, because the women’s game is showing up in your algorithm over and over, that mainstream has truly caught on. I don't know if that's true. Yes, this year we've seen monster progress with incredible viewership across the WNBA and women's college basketball. But I still think we have a long way to go. One thing that I love to do when I’m calling a game, especially on the road, is to check out local podcasts. What’s been the conversation in the community? Either for both teams if I'm traveling to do a national game, or if I'm traveling with the Knicks to do a Knicks game. I think podcasting has given us this unique lens into the fan experience, because fans are smart and engaged and locked in. You can pick up really cool insights. Sport is so much about the community, and that’s where I find some of my favorite nuggets.&nbsp;

Sport allows us to have conversations. It brings together community and it empowers people, particularly our young women. There's so much <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-and-the-tucker-center-are-partnering-to-keep-girls-in-sport" rel="noopener noreferrer">research on women who go on to be leaders and C-suite executives because of their background in sport</a>. And if you're interested in sport at all, there's a seat for you in the women’s game. Come check it out. Show respect and pay homage to these athletes for doing incredible things. Basically, pick a city and pull up!&nbsp;For girls in sport, I’m already seeing a boldness and an audacity and expectation. I'll be 35 this month, but I vividly remember, not so long ago, boys getting certain things we didn't get. And it was like, “Hold up, let me get this straight: They ain't won no tournament games and I have, but they get the better X, Y, and Z?!”This generation has shown us that multiple things can be true. I can be incredibly appreciative of the opportunity in front of me and also say, “Hey, we're deserving of more as student athletes on this campus.” This generation’s willingness to speak up for themselves and ask for better, even if the conditions might not be poor, but to say, “this can be improved” — I think that's dope.&nbsp;Two career moments stick with me where I knew I was doing the right work. The first was 2021. South Carolina and UConn were one and two in the country in women's NCAA basketball and I called the game with broadcaster Lisa Byington. Incredible contest: <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/behind-the-scenes-of-paige-bueckers-new-york-fashion-week" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paige Bueckers</a>, Aliyah Boston, <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/stories/a-ja-wilson-and-dawn-staley-on-their-coach-player-bond" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dawn Staley</a>, Geno Auriemma. I remember waking up that day feeling like they were gonna call me and say they were putting somebody else in. It was huge for me. And then, last year's Game 2 of the NBA Eastern Conference playoffs, Knicks versus Sixers. That finish will be something I remember for the rest of my career. The rest of my life, frankly.&nbsp;

My advice for young women looking to advance in sport: Have a healthy relationship with the word “no.” Use it to protect yourself and your dreams and receive it without it decimating your aspirations. And that can be tough. Sports are so saturated. There's a reason people want to get into it! It's competitive, just like the actual games. You need to have a certain level of toughness to keep navigating the series of “no’s” that are, frankly, inevitable.Second, you gotta be where your feet are. The only thing in life that is truly inevitable is change and for a lot of us — byproducts of American society, Millennials down to Gen Z, whoever — we want to skip steps. But there's no microwave. You know what I'm saying? Let it slow cook. Learn what you're supposed to learn in each season and enjoy it. Because if the job takes over your life, you may miss out on some of the things personally, right? So, while you've got balance, or maybe your personal life is the leader in the clubhouse, enjoy it, because it can change.&nbsp;Movement is a nonnegotiable for me. It's funny, for ex-athletes, I find it takes a long time to develop the soft workout regimen because it's like, “If I'm not sweating or burning 1,000 calories, did I do anything?!” And now, being a bit older and not competing at a high level anymore, you learn the importance of different modalities and listening to your body. I am always down to throw around some kettlebells. I love a good Pilates class. Even walks, right? Getting outside, taking in some fresh air, just moving my body. That’s one of the things I took from my athlete foundation. You have to move, for your muscles and your mind.&nbsp;&nbsp;Thinking about the next season of the W, I’m thrilled about the expansion. I think when you've got a charter organization like the Liberty that finally gets their championship, you got new organizations coming in, you've got athletes that are connecting both on and off the court, brands as big as ever — it makes you think, “What is it going to look like in 10 to 15 years when the generation of girls that got to watch this version of the WNBA are turning pro and becoming college athletes on their own?” You can only imagine that the boldness is going to continue. And the talent. You got Caitlin Clark coming out of college knocking down all those records, having a historic rookie season. You got JuJu Watkins coming behind her. The talent keeps growing. And a true love for the game.&nbsp;

The acclaimed sports analyst calls the shots on the future of the game.

Monica McNutt Says We Haven’t Even Come Close to Peak Women’s Sports

<h3>In 2011, Faith Kipyegon walked the grounds at Unhuru Gardens in Nairobi, Kenya, the wind tossing the long grass in her path. She was 16 years old and competing in the junior division of the Kenyan National Cross Country Championships, recognized as one of the most competitive races in the world, a 6-kilometer sprint over rough, hilly terrain through Kenya’s Rift Valley. After checking out the race course on a leisurely walk, the only variable that mattered to Faith was, poetically, the matter under her feet. “I took one look at the texture of the grass, how soft it was, and I told my coach ‘I’m not going to use my spikes today. I’m going to win barefoot,’” she says. And she did.</h3><h3>In some ways, Faith Kipyegon, now 30, still describes herself as that same, barefooted young runner who believed she could go the distance. Her performance in Paris this summer secured her place in track lore as the only runner, man or woman, to win three back-to-back gold medals in the 1,500 meter. Her 2023 campaign, when she set world records in the 1,500m, the mile, and the 5,000m, is considered one of the greatest individual seasons in the history of track and field. In other ways, her identity as a runner has fundamentally changed, particularly since the 2018 addition of her very junior training partner, her daughter Alyn.&nbsp;</h3><h3>Here, Faith shares more on her dominant career, the intersection of motherhood and running identity, the one thing Alyn needs after a victory by her mother, and more.&nbsp;</h3> Running barefoot has always felt comfortable to me. When I started running competitively at 14, I was given spikes to wear for the first time. I was happy to have them, but feeling as comfortable in spikes as I was while running barefoot took a long time. I even turned down wearing spikes a few times. Now, I still can’t believe how I’m running in the fastest spikes on the planet.Running is a shared childhood experience in Kenya. I grew up in a small village called Ndababit, in Nakuru country, about 140 miles west of Nairobi. From the time I was in preschool, we’d run four kilometers to school, run back home for lunch, run back to school, and then run four kilometers home, every day through the 8th grade.When young runners from the next generation watch me compete, I want them to see freedom — the freedom to challenge themselves in new ways. My 2024 season was beautiful. I was thankful for competing in the 5,000m in Paris and the 1,500m, which happened a few days later. But when I held that silver medal from the 5,000m, I thought to myself, “I can’t let this disturb my 1,500 dreams.” So I put that silver medal away. I had to be mentally strong to achieve my goal in the 1,500m.Motherhood gives me life as a runner. I’ve gotten extra energy from being a mother to Alyn. She sees how committed I am, how hard I work. During the season, she understands that I go to training camp from Monday to Saturday, and then I go back home, only to spend one day with her. It’s really not easy, but she understands the sacrifices I’m making. She motivates me to work as hard as I can.I talk to my daughter before every race. She normally says the same thing to me: She wishes me all the best, and she asks me to bring chocolate back home — and the gold medal.

Motherhood can affect how you see your running career. My approach to Rio, Tokyo and Paris were all totally different. My first gold medal in Rio, I was 22, so young. I was still running for myself. In Tokyo, I had my daughter around me, but she was only three years old, and she couldn’t fully understand what I was doing. She was watching me and going, “Mommy’s running,” not, “Mommy’s running for a gold medal.”&nbsp;In Paris, she knows what it’s like when I win, but she also knows what it’s like when I lose. After the 5,000 in Paris, she called me and asked, “Mom, why were you in position two this time? What happened?” It’s very difficult to explain to a child what happened in a race while still being a role model to her. It’s totally different from Rio. Today, I’m running to inspire my daughter and other young girls like her.All athletes have something that exists outside their comfort zone. For me, that’s swimming. I remember in 2011 when I was in Punta Umbria for the youth international cross country championships. I met with my team at one of the local lakes to celebrate. I looked down at the water, believing it was this shallow pool. I jumped in. The next thing I knew, the water was up to my ears, and I couldn’t hear anything. Swimming is the one thing I wish I was better at.When I reach the end of my career, I want to be known for empowering all women, and especially new mothers. It’s possible to be a mother, go on maternity leave, and come back even stronger than before. Being a mother is not the end of your career. It’s the beginning of a new chapter.

The middle-distance champion on her dominant career, the intersection of motherhood and running identity, and more.

How Faith Kipyegon Empowers Herself — and All Women Runners

<h3>Nike's spent more than 50 years powering sports, shaping culture, and breaking barriers through its iconic innovation, storytelling and athletes. To help launch the company into its next 50, Elliott Hill is stepping in as the new President &amp; CEO of NIKE, Inc. Hill is a natural leader for the brand — gregarious, curious, and passionate about Nike culture. He's clear on the opportunities ahead.</h3>“We will put the athlete* at the center of everything we do,” he says. “We’re a company of dreamers, optimists, and inventors, and our eyes are on the future — we’re going to simplify and go.” Kicking off his 33rd year at the brand, Hill shares what it's like being back at the Swoosh and what's next for Nike.

Elliott Hill On Coming Home

I was raised in Austin, Texas by a single mom who was a school teacher — she taught almost 51 years, even taught summer school to raise two kids. Watching her helped create the values that I have today. Hard work, commitment, passion, compassion, consideration. My mom was, despite how busy she was, always the first person in the neighborhood doing the extra work and showing up for others. What drives me to this day are the values that she instilled in me. And I think you see some of that when I'm walking around on campus, it's that know-no-stranger response, to treat every human being like they matter.I grew up in a diverse, blue-collar neighborhood where sports were a daily part of our lives. We lived out in the streets. We played traditional sports, sports we made up — we were out there having fun, always at the rec center down the street. For me, those experiences shaped a lifelong love and passion for all kinds of sports and all kinds of people.

"I Could Go Deeper On My Love of Sports"

No looking backward. The Nike team and its new President & CEO are harnessing the company’s magic to move it to a stronger future.