Source: Jasmyn Wimbish
The apparel and footwear company is applying Air technology to products across basketball, track, and soccer
PARIS — As the 2024 Olympics approach, Nike unveiled an array of products Team USA as well as other countries will be wearing in the city that will take center stage of the sports world in July. The global event unveiled the uniforms that athletes across basketball, track and field, soccer, and skateboarding will be decked out in as they all compete to win a gold medal in Paris.
Janet Nichol, vice president of apparel innovation at Nike, talked about how the 2024 Paris Olympics will serve as a “moment for apparel.” Nike’s Olympic uniforms were created in conjunction with the Nike Sports Research Lab in Beaverton, Ore., where they brought athletes in to go through testing and data collection so that the company could design uniforms that will perform at the highest level.
“On the apparel side, why it’s a game-changer for us, is because we’ve now been able to take athlete insights, along with data, and use that algorithm to create something that allows us to get to a level of specificity, fidelity and accuracy that we’ve never been able to do before,” Nichol said.
Nike used advanced body scanning and motion capturing to design the most precise uniforms that will fit both men’s and women’s athletes, as well as those competing in the Paralympics. The company also focused on creating uniforms that are unique to each sport and country. For track and field, Nike created specific kits only for athletes that make it to the final events, something the company has never done before. Those kits have a digitally captured design that represents a runner’s body in motion, creating a swirl of color specific to each country’s uniform. The athletes who have already seen the kits have already dubbed the design the “party print.”
For basketball, the same method of precision and design applies to the uniforms, as Nike wanted to ensure enough breathability, ventilation and mobility. The design is a major departure from what the basketball teams wore at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Instead of a color-blocked look for Team USA, for instance, blue and red take center stage, while the side panels display a similar burst of color that the “party print” track uniforms have. A striped and dotted pattern overlays the entire uniform from jersey to shorts, creating a more unique design from what we’ve seen from Nike’s Olympic basketball uniforms in the past.
In addition to the unveiling of the Olympic kits, the company also celebrated the history of Air technology at the Nike Air Immersion space. The space was designed to show the initial creation of the cushioning system that was introduced in the 1978 Nike Tailwind shoe, and took you all the way to the future of one of the most well-known features to exist within the company.
While the cushioning system has existed within shoes across a variety of sports for years, Nike highlighted how it plans to use Air technology in new ways. For sprinters and middle-distance runners at the 2024 Olympic Games, they’ll be wearing updated spikes that use Air Zoom units, which will give them more stability while also providing the cushion and boost synonymous with Nike Air.
“For our sprinters and our track athletes, they need something that is stable and that they can control, but they want all that energy back on the track,” Nike’s global running footwear product manager Elliott Heath said. “This comes to life in a dual-chamber pod system that helps create stability as well as capture that force and return it to the athlete…that’s what makes Air Zoom different than the other types of Air from Nike is that you’re able to put high pressures and really shape that [Air] bag to design around it and deliver the performance that athletes need.”
On the field, the same method of applying updated Zoom technology will apply when athletes like French national soccer team player Kylian Mbappe puts on the new Air Zoom Mercurial in July.
Through the new uniforms and footwear, Nike is leaning into the creative side of where sports design and innovation can go, while also building upon its own history. And when the 2024 Paris Olympic Games begin, there will be a slew of athletes decked out in this gear in hopes of winning gold for their country.
THE AUTHOR: Jasmyn Wimbish
