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Spotlight: Sustainability

How We Create Aero-FIT

From The Record

In 2014, a prominent sports-science journalist predicted that it would be 2075 before a human being ran a sub-2-hour marathon. The following year, researchers said it was unlikely to happen before the end of the century.There was something the experts didn’t know, though: Even as those projections were being made, a team of Nike scientists in a lab far from public view was already at work on a project that would shatter the predictions, collapsing the timeline by decades and fundamentally changing the sport of marathon running.

The Math of Impossible

In the mid 2010s, the marathon world record stood at 2:02:57. Closing the remaining gap would require the world’s best runners to sustain unprecedented speed over 26.2 miles without burning through their energy reserves —&nbsp;a feat still thought to be beyond the limits of human performance.Inside the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL), scientists had quietly begun asking a simple question: What if everyone was wrong?

To find the answer, they turned to research that had been underway for years. Scientists at the NSRL had been studying fatigue, examining how to define and quantify it across different sports and athletes, how it affected performance and injury, and how Nike might help mitigate its effects.“Fatigue is universal. It’s something every athlete, at every level, experiences,” says Matthew Nurse, Nike Chief Science Officer and Vice President, NSRL. “We’d spent years studying how it affects performance and injury and how we might mitigate those effects. By the time we began looking at the 2-hour marathon, the ingredients were already on the table.”With the 2-hour marathon now in their sights, the team began doing the math. How much faster would the world’s best marathoners need to get? And how much of that improvement could come from their footwear?The calculations pointed to an enormous jump —&nbsp;to break 2 hours, the best would need to get roughly 3% faster, and likely improve their running economy by more than 3%. In a sport where records were typically chipped away in seconds over many years, they were looking to shave off 3 minutes in a single leap.“The idea of taking 3 minutes off in one go sounded crazy,” recalls Stefan Guest, VP, Creative Director, Global Football, who was leading running footwear innovation design at the time. “Yet we knew enough internally that we might just do it.”

Dreaming Big

The possibility caught the attention of the late Sandy Bodecker, then Nike’s Vice President of Special Projects, who’d spent decades <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/i-want-brazil-the-four-years-that-launched-nike-football" target="null">building a reputation around pursuing ideas others considered unattainable.</a>&nbsp;With Bodecker’s backing, the team began looking for where those some 180 seconds of gains might come from.The prevailing wisdom around marathon footwear at the time was that if you wanted to make a racing shoe faster, you had to make it lighter. For years, that had meant stripping shoes down. Making them lower, flatter, thinner. Removing as much material as possible while leaving just enough cushioning to carry a runner through 26.2 miles and roughly 28,000 steps.Nike had already pushed that formula close to its limit. There was only so much material that designers could remove before there was nothing left.“We were exhausting that path,” Guest remembers. “You could keep making it thinner and thinner and lighter and lighter, but at some point, the shoe was going to disintegrate.”Researchers already knew that other footwear properties, including cushioning and plate stiffness, could improve running economy. But the gains had been relatively small, and what benefited one athlete didn't necessarily benefit another.Reaching a sub-2 goal, then, would require the brand to rethink its approach to speed entirely and create something completely new.

A New Formula for Speed

The breakthrough would come thousands of miles away, at a lesser-known materials manufacturer in the United Kingdom.Back then, most athletic footwear foams were made using a chemical process. But with the Swoosh in search of a new way forward, Denis Schiller, now Nike Senior Footwear Material Researcher, made a discovery: Zotefoams, a British materials company, had recently developed an approach that used extreme pressure to force nitrogen into its foam, resulting in a material that was significantly lighter while returning more energy.“We got this massive unlock all in one material: better-quality foam, more energy return, lighter weight, and it also turned out to be more resilient than we expected,” says Nike Footwear Developer Chris Cook, who worked on the project’s earliest prototypes.The unlock would eventually become known as ZoomX.

Numbers on the Screen

With the new lighter-weight foam came a new sense of possibility. For the first time, Nike could add more cushioning without the weight penalty that had traditionally come with it. Instead of continuing to strip material away, designers could begin adding it back, getting more energy return in the process.But the team was still chasing an unimaginable target: To erase nearly 3 minutes from the world’s fastest marathon time, the new technology would have to deliver a dramatic improvement in running economy, or how much energy you use to maintain your pace.They began experimenting with how much foam they could put underfoot and how it might work together with another emerging piece of the shoe equation: a curved carbon-fiber plate. Rather than simply making the plate stiffer, the team engineered its shape and curvature to reduce the biomechanical load on the runner.Together, the two technologies created a new kind of system, combining cushioning, stiffness and energy return in a way racing shoes hadn’t before. With each step, the curved plate worked in concert with the lightweight, energy-returning foam to reduce the amount of energy required to maintain pace.

As the pieces began coming together, the team built a series of prototypes with the NSRL to find out if the theoretical gains would translate to better results when athletes ran in them in the real world.Emily Farina, now Nike’s Senior Principal Researcher, NSRL, was one of the researchers conducting those early studies, using biomechanics to drive the footwear design. Part of her role involved measuring athletes’ oxygen consumption as they ran at a controlled speed — they wore oxygen masks as they ran on a treadmill — and tracking how much energy it took to maintain their pace. The PhD-trained researcher recalls sitting behind her monitor as the data began coming in.“I’m watching the screen, and I’m seeing the numbers, and I did a double take," she recalls. “I almost wanted to check the mask: ‘Is this working?’”The improvement in metabolic cost was so striking that Farina immediately understood a significant moment was unfolding.“The numbers that were popping up on the screen in real time were different from anything we’d previously seen,” she says. “Before we even analyzed the data, I knew something big was happening.”When she calculated the results, Farina’s instincts were confirmed. Runners in the new prototypes were seeing a 4 percent boost in running economy compared with Nike’s previous racing shoe. Even more rare, every runner was getting the benefit.With the numbers to back up their new formula, designers began turning the prototype into a racing shoe. What emerged was a piece of footwear the world would soon know as the Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%.

Speed Without Sacrifice

As designers continued working with the new foam and the Vaporfly began taking shape, a secondary benefit soon became clear, one no one had expected. The same formula that was producing marked gains in speed was also delivering something rarely associated with racing shoes at the time: comfort.For generations of distance runners up to that point, going faster had generally meant giving something up. The lightest racing shoes offered little protection from the pavement, and the pounding on their feet was simply part of racing.“The mindset at the time was that there was an inverse relationship between speed and comfort,” says Elliott Heath, Nike’s Running Lead for Sport Innovation Studio. “It was just accepted that to be the fastest, you had to sacrifice part of your body.”

Carrie Dimoff, a former U.S. Olympic Trials marathoner who joined Nike Innovation in 2016, knew the tradeoff well. She’d spent years racing in the thin, lightweight flats that dominated the sport at the time.But working at Nike meant she understood the benefits of the Vaporfly before the masses. When she began racing in it, the difference was immediate.“When I stood on the starting line of the Boston Marathon in 2017, it was when Vaporfly was still pretty early and unknown. It felt like having a secret edge,” she recalls.Now Product Director, Footwear Innovation, Dimoff remembers looking at fellow competitors wearing the thin racing flats that had long defined the category and feeling sorry for them.“I was standing next to runners wearing 10-millimeter EVA-foam flats, as thin as slippers, and I thought, I cannot believe they’re going to beat themselves up on this hilly course wearing those little shoes, while I'm out here with all this protection and propulsion."For Heath, also an elite runner and U.S. Olympic Trials athlete, the benefits of that extra protection went beyond race day. As a professional runner, he’d endured a series of foot injuries and three surgeries in four years. During his recovery, he began wearing the Vaporfly simply to walk around Nike campus.“The carbon-fiber plate and the rocker and the propulsive geometry made my foot do less work, and then the extra cushion protected the hot spot,” he remembers. “It gave me hope that I would be able to run again.”

Now that the Vaporfly was out in the world, it was time to put it to the test.The project had originated with the audacious goal of achieving a sub-2-hour marathon, and with a shoe already showing incredible gains in speed, Nike was ready to see if its moonshot could land.

Going After Sub-2

The ambition became <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-introduces-breaking2" target="null">Breaking2</a>. On May 6, 2017, three of the world’s best marathoners lined up before dawn on a Formula One track in Monza, Italy, ready to see if they could break the elusive barrier.Nike had spent months <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/inside-look-at-nike-breaking2-project" target="null">obsessing over every detail</a>, from fueling, aerodynamics and pacing to the course itself. A team of 30 pacers stood ready to rotate in and out. At 5:45 a.m., they took off in pursuit of history.Two hours and 25 seconds later, Eliud Kipchoge crossed the finish line, just shy of a barrier that, only a few years earlier, experts had predicted might stand for decades.The 2-hour mark remained unbroken, but with Kipchoge’s performance, it was suddenly within reach.Nike was already working on the shoe that would take him the rest of the way.

The Final 25 Seconds

Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, Nike had begun working on the next generation of super shoes before Breaking2 even took place. As the Vaporfly prepared to make its public debut, designers and researchers were asking how they could push the new system further.For Guest, part of the answer lay in a technology that had been defining Nike for decades: Air. The team began exploring how the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-blueprint-pack-official-images" target="null">proprietary cushioning platform</a> could work in concert with the ZoomX foam and carbon-fiber plate, eventually developing a system of speed that placed two highly responsive Air Zoom units beneath the forefoot.Farina, who had helped study the biomechanics of the original Vaporfly, remembers the Alphafly beginning to take shape before runners had even fully grasped what its predecessor could do.“By the time the Vaporfly came out, the idea of the Alphafly already existed,” she says. “So in our minds, we were thinking, Oh, just wait. There’s even more coming.”Two years after Monza, Kipchoge was ready to try again. This time, he arrived with a prototype of Nike’s next-generation racing shoe on his feet, an early version of what would become the Alphafly Air Zoom NEXT%.On a tree-lined course in Vienna, Austria, thousands of spectators crowded the route as Kipchoge ran behind a rotating formation of pacers. For 26.2 miles, he maintained the blistering pace —&nbsp;an average of 4 minutes and 34 seconds per mile, or 2 minutes and 50 seconds per kilometer — required to break the 2-hour barrier.When he crossed the finish line, the clock read 1:59:40. The performance of the future had arrived more than a half century early.

For all the attention paid to the clock in Vienna, there was another, quieter sign of just how much marathon racing was changing.Heath, who was working closely with Kipchoge at the time, remembers talking with him the next morning when the marathon champion mentioned that he’d gone for a run. Heath was stunned —&nbsp;in Kipchoge’s previous 10 marathons, he’d never run the following day.“He told me it was the first time he ever felt like his body could run the day after a marathon,” Heath recalls. “And he did it the day after running 1:59:40.”

A Ripple Effect

During the next seven years, Nike continued building on their system of speed, refining the interplay between foam, Air and carbon-fiber plate across successive generations of the Vaporfly and Alphafly. The process has been relentlessly iterative.“Once we started seeing how big the effects could be, we created a model relating footwear properties to athlete outcomes, and it became a scientific playground of, ‘Wow, what are the limits? What can we make next?’” says Farina.

This work is only possible, she says, because Nike can connect what researchers are learning in the lab directly to the people creating the shoes, all under one roof at the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/lebron-james-innovation-center-nike-sport-research-lab" target="">LeBron James Innovation Center</a>. If her team wants to understand what would happen with a differently shaped plate or a precise change in stack height, for example, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/phil-mccartney-is-showing-what-innovation-means-inside-nike-now" target="null">they can ask for it</a>, have a prototype built, test it, and begin the cycle again within days. Those prototypes can then go directly to some of the world’s best athletes, allowing the team to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/how-nike-created-apex-and-its-next-prototypes-with-elite-athletes" target="">listen to their feedback</a>, learn from their experience, and continually refine the technology.The process is purposeful, reminds Matthew Nurse, who keeps the signed 2017 custom Vaporfly Elite that Eliud Kipchoge wore for Breaking2 on his desk. "We didn't accidentally stumble onto the solution for breaking the two-hour barrier, or any of our product advancements since," he says. "Our research and our work with our athletes has allowed us to deeply understand the interplay among all the footwear levers, and how they effect performance, comfort and injury risk. And that's helped us to pioneer, innovate and drive this industry."It's a leader's recipe for launching the next generation of racing footwear, already underway.

The Next Frontier

Ten years after rewriting the formula for marathon shoes, Nike is still discovering new ways to push the sport’s gain-making technology forward. Its latest leap, Nike Apex, delivers up to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/introducing-nike-apex-the-next-leap-in-marathon-speed" target="_blank">40 percent more energy return than the Alphafly 3</a>.For Dimoff, that pursuit is the through line that connects the audacious experiment that began more than a decade ago with whatever comes next.“Our job is to continue finding those edges,” she says. “To keep pushing into spaces where no one is going and really show the world what’s possible.”—

See the milestone models and technology updates that kept pushing the sport, and Nike, forward.

2026

Arriving in January 2027, Nike Apex introduces the first double-stacked Air Zoom units in a racing shoe, along with new ZoomX LT foam and a redesigned carbon-fiber Flyplate, all while weighing some 10 percent less than the Alphafly 3. The shoe is Nike’s current pinnacle expression of race-day innovation, created for marathon runners chasing every possible second.&nbsp;

Designers refined every component of the Nike Alphafly 4 to create a smoother, more efficient marathon experience. The result is a shoe that delivers 10 percent more energy return than its predecessor; is 5 percent lighter; and features a new Atomknit upper, ZoomX LT foam, updated Air Zoom units, a carbon-fiber Flyplate and a Fast Shot outsole.

2024

The Nike Vaporfly 4 blends the stability and softness of the Vaporfly 3, creating a finely tuned balance of support and propulsion. That’s born from an updated Nike Flyplate curvature, which helps unlock leverage from the foot and ankle, and energy return generated by ZoomX foam. It’s also boosted by the featherweight design, which is roughly 10 percent lighter than the Vaporfly 3 and 20 grams lighter than the original Vaporfly (2017).

For the first time, the Nike Alphafly 3 connected the heel and forefoot with one continuous bottom, offering varying foot-strike patterns a smoother heel-to-toe transition regardless of the runner’s pace. Dual Nike Air Zoom units in the forefoot cushion impact with the road and return energy to the runner, and a wider full-length carbon-fiber Flyplate delivers a propulsive, stable ride.

2023

The engine of the Nike ZoomX Vaporfly 3 remained the same as the Vaporfly 2, with the propulsive feel runners love from the pairing of a full-length carbon-fiber Flyplate and ZoomX midsole. The Vaporfly 3’s reductive midsole geometry featured a convex shape around the forefoot, providing a comfortable and stable ride throughout your transition with Nike’s most resilient foam.&nbsp;Graphic text on the midsole nodded to the number of Flyknit upper iterations the team tested (57), and the iconic drop Swoosh against the all-white silhouette paid homage to the first Vaporfly worn at Breaking2 in 2017.

2022

Additional foam was added under the Zoom Air pods in the forefoot of the Nike Air Zoom Alphafly Next% 2, offering more energy return and helping ensure a smooth transition from heel to forefoot as runners go through their stride. A slightly wider heel helped improve stability and transition through changes of pace. The upper featured Atomknit 2.0, engineered for containment in the forefoot, breathability above the toes and comfortable padding under the laces.

2021

The Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% 2 kept the tried-and-true system of ZoomX midsole and carbon-fiber Flyplate to provide snappy responsiveness and fight fatigue.The Flyweave upper was updated with an even more breathable, flexible material to better the fit, and the shoe’s geometry and midsole composition mimicked its beloved predecessor.

2019

The Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% introduced Vaporweave, an upper material construction that’s lighter than Nike Flyknit, breathable and — critically — absorbs far less water from sweat or rain, so it stays airy and dry over the course of a marathon. The shoe added 15 percent more Nike ZoomX foam in the midsole compared to the Vaporfly 4% and received a redesigned traction pattern (thanks to an ask from Eliud Kipchoge after he ran a very wet race in Berlin).&nbsp;

2017

The Zoom Vaporfly Elite began as a concept shoe individually tuned for Eliud Kipchoge, Lelisa Desisa and Zersenay Tadese to attempt Breaking2 in Monza, Italy, in 2017. Complementing the ZoomX foam and carbon-fiber Flyplate was a smooth-fitting, lightweight Nike Flyknit upper, which provided support and containment.

An early sample of the Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%, the super shoe that changed the way marathon shoes were made. Until this point, conventional wisdom was that marathon shoes must be featherlight and low to the ground. The Vaporfly 4% challenged the norm and presented a new system: stacked, energy-returning foam and a propulsive carbon-fiber plate. When Nike first launched the model, researchers found it delivered an average of 4 percent improved running economy over the brand’s previous fastest marathon shoe, the Nike Zoom Streak 6.

10 Years of Super Shoe Loop

Ten years ago, Nike set out to break a barrier many said was impossible. The shoe it built transformed running — and ushered in a new era of human potential.

Nike Running

Feature

A Decade of the Super Shoe: How Nike Redefined Speed

For the past six months, I’ve been reunited with a country that helped shape my understanding of Nike’s potential to change lives, build an industry, and grow through a deep connection to consumers and a passion for sport.I’ve traveled extensively across Greater China in that time and witnessed the resilience of Nike and Jordan and our strong connection to athletes* across the country. I’ve felt it from the unmatched energy of 25,000 fans at a Shanghai Port v. Yunnan Yukun CSL game at Pudong Football Stadium. From the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/lebron-china-tour-rise-eybl-scrimmage" target="_blank">next generation</a> competing in the China High School Basketball League; the Saturday morning pick-up basketball in Tianhe Sports Courts in Guangzhou; taking fencing lessons with Olympic champion <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/cheung-ka-long-wins-gold" target="_blank">Edgar Cheung Ka-long</a>; and the truly epic ACG ChongLi 168K Trail Run, where even the threat of a typhoon couldn’t stop our team or the 12,000 runners or the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/trail-runner-yao-miao-is-running-down-new-goals-with-acg" target="_blank">inspirational Yao Miao</a> running alongside young girls in the youth race.&nbsp;Sport is a fuel in our cities. It shapes culture and reminds Chinese athletes of all ages and abilities that potential is unlimited. Nike and Jordan are alive and well here. Our foundation is strong, and our connection to athletes is authentic and powerful.

I’ve also spent hundreds of hours on the commercial streets of our cities, visiting malls, observing consumers, studying livestreams, meeting with partners, and walking stores with our teammates. This is a fast-moving, deeply connected marketplace. I started my career on the sales floor of a Nike store and have since spent 25 years shaping Nike’s global marketplace and consumer experience, with an outsized share of time in Asia, so this opportunity is personal for me. I’ve seen the power of immersive retail experiences and connected digital to inspire consumers through access to the world’s greatest athletes and innovative product. I’ve witnessed that magical moment of lacing up a new pair of Nike running shoes for a new 5K goal.&nbsp;What all of this has reinforced is simple: Our connection with athletes remains strong, but the marketplace is not where it needs to be. Consumers expect authentic product, consistent storytelling and a seamless experience across every touchpoint. By creating a more consistent, premium and connected marketplace, we can reduce fragmentation, strengthen trust and deliver a better Nike and Jordan experience wherever consumers choose to engage.Rather than keeping pace — or leading, as our history would suggest — our presence has become too fragmented. As consumer behavior shifted rapidly during and after COVID, some of the steps we took created an experience that is less consistent, less trusted and not delivering the growth we expect.

So we are taking actions with a focused strategy to reimagine our marketplace end to end, starting with digital. Beginning in January 2027, Nike’s digital marketplace in China will be anchored by official Nike flagship experiences on Tmall, JD.com and Douyin, alongside Nike.com.cn and the Nike App. These new flagships will serve as the single elevated destination for Nike within these ecosystems, with clearer product presentation, stronger storytelling and more connected consumer journeys. This is about strengthening the platforms where consumers already begin and end their shopping journey, making sure those experiences are direct, consistent and unmistakably Nike.As part of this change, with some exceptions across licensee partners, partner-operated online storefronts will transition out of selling Nike product. This is not about reducing access. It is about reducing fragmentation and strengthening the consumer journey. When the experience is consistent, the brand becomes stronger.This is not just a digital strategy. Nike and Jordan stores remain central to how athletes experience our brands. Our retail partners play a critical role in bringing sport to life across communities, and we are committed to growing together.

In the past six months, we’ve opened new concepts such as ACG Basecamp and Rookie Kids stores and elevated our existing fleet, including our flagship House of Innovation in Shanghai, and we’ve seen strong consumer response through positive comps and returning traffic. We are also developing new locally led retail concepts that will come to market in the next six months. The work I’ve seen is authentic, is innovative and feels like the Nike we know and love.We will continue working closely with partners to elevate product presentation, improve service, sharpen assortments and create more meaningful sport-led experiences in stores. When we make these improvements, consumers respond, and we see clear opportunity to further strengthen the marketplace while creating value for our partners.

Our partner relationships are built on the shared understanding that short-term change is sometimes necessary to build a healthier marketplace for the long term. Yu Wu, Chairman, CEO &amp; Executive Director of Topsports International Holdings Ltd, whom I have come to know and deeply respect, recently described the opportunity this way to me:“As Nike’s largest distributor in the Chinese mainland, Topsports has worked with Nike for 27 years based on the principle of mutual benefit and shared growth. This adjustment will bring some short-term pressure to our business. But we firmly believe that, over the medium– to long-term, this direction will help promote a healthier, more orderly, and more sustainable retail ecosystem in China, while further improving consumer experience and product appeal.“Looking ahead, we will continue to work closely with Nike, leveraging our strengths in offline retail operations, local consumer service and deep market development across city tiers. Through new concept sport stores and high-quality physical retail experiences, we will bring Chinese consumers richer and more meaningful sport experiences.”I couldn’t agree more. This is about building a stronger, more sustainable marketplace — one that better serves consumers and supports long-term growth for both Nike and our partners.

We are also making broader changes to get closer to the consumer and support this transformation. We’ve named our first-ever Greater China Vice President of Local Product Creation, focused on building product designed, developed and made in China for Chinese consumers. That focus is essential to delivering the speed, relevance and precision this market demands.At the same time, we are strengthening our connection to communities, expanding local activations, investing in regional teams, and placing Nike teammates closer to where consumers live, shop and play sport. Because the strongest marketplace is one where product, storytelling, community, digital and retail work together seamlessly. It is where consumers can move from inspiration to purchase to participation without friction. And it is where every interaction reinforces what Nike stands for.

That is the strategy: a more premium digital marketplace, a stronger retail experience, more locally created product, and teams empowered closer to the consumer, all working together to deliver a consistent, elevated Nike experience.We are making these changes with clarity and conviction because we believe deeply in this market and its long-term potential. That belief is shaping the actions we are taking now. This work will take focus and discipline. But the direction is clear. The marketplace has changed. So, we will too.&nbsp;And we have the right team in place to keep up this momentum. Our teammates across Greater China inspire me every day. They know this market, understand our consumers and are already doing the work to elevate our brands. Personally, I’m energized and optimistic. Nike’s future in Greater China is bright. We remain deeply committed to building that future, one grounded in a stronger, more connected, elevated marketplace, both online and in-store, and focused on serving athletes across Greater China better than ever before.

*If you have a body, you are an athlete.

Cathy Sparks, Vice President & General Manager of Greater China, lays out a clear strategy for the future.

Nike Leadership

How We’re Reimagining the Marketplace in Greater China to Better Serve Athletes

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

The Anatomy of a Uniform

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

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

The Aerodynamic Frontier

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

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

A Lineage of Bespoke Innovation

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

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

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

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