Nike’s Tokyo 2021 Olympic Gear: Medal Stand, Vapormax, Space Hippie
Ever since the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy, US athletes on the Olympic podium have worn Nike. Nike apparel. Nike footwear. Not just on the podium, either; Team USA athletes competing in about half of the events, from track and field to soccer to speed skating, wear a Nike kit. Thanks to a deal inked in 2019, that near-ubiquity will persist at least through the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. The swoosh, as they say, is strong.
But that near-ubiquity also comes with a challenge: staying ahead of the curve on said swoosh. With performance technology progressing as fast as it does, how early do you have to start thinking about the gear athletes will need for the next massive quadrennial global competition?
About four years, as it turns out. “As soon as the closing ceremony is over and the flame is passed,” Nike chief design officer John Hoke says, “our work for the next Summer Olympics begins.
” That’s not just marketing speak. The 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro ended on August 21 of that year; in September, a chunk of Nike’s design team was in Japan, meeting with the Tokyo Olympic Committee to see where its members’ collective heads were.
A couple of things became clear very quickly. The first was that Tokyo would be a far cry from Rio. Augusts in the Brazilian city would feel familiar to anyone who’s been to Miami in the winter: average highs around 78 degrees Fahrenheit, and a respite from the usual humidity. Tokyo in August? Not so much. Hot, muggy, ugh.
The second thing the Tokyo committee made clear was their seriousness about sustainability. This wasn’t new to Olympic organizers—dating back to the Sydney games in 2000, officials had implemented measures meant to offset the undeniable impact of being a host city—but Tokyo had a couple of new measures in mind. They’d hired architect Kengo Kuma, known for work that sought to live in balance with its surroundings, to design the National Stadium central to the Games.
They’d also committed to making the medals not just from recycled materials but recycled cell phones.
Athletes on the podium at the Tokyo Olympics will wear items from the Medal Stand collection.Courtesy of Nike
This was all music to the Nike team’s ears. They’d tried designing Olympic gear with a similar ecological bent before, like the running singlet for the 2000 Sydney Games that was made from recycled bottles, but intention and execution didn’t always match up. “It didn’t look great, it didn’t feel great,” Hoke says, looking back on that singlet. But now? With a handful of Olympics and two more decades of science and design innovation under their belt? Tokyo would give them a chance to balance performance and principle.
The resulting footwear and apparel—which Nike unveiled last year, mere months before the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the 2020 Games to summer 2021—seeks to do just that. It’s technically considered to what Hoke calls “the atom level,” employing computational design to deliver either second-skin fit or breathable billows, depending on the sport’s specific needs.
It also represents the company’s biggest demonstration yet that sustainability doesn’t have to mean sacrifice—aesthetic, athletic, or otherwise.
By now, of course, we know that those 2016 meetings about Tokyo’s weather dangers have already been borne out. Test events in August 2019 met temperatures so high that rowers suffered heat exhaustion and triathletes fared worse. The Olympic Committee responded by moving this year’s marathon 500 miles north to Sapporo in hopes of a less brutal climate.
Nike Book Envisions 2073 With Olympics in Space, Spider Silk Clothing
- Nike recently published a fun and thought-provoking book about the company’s next 50 years.
- The company playfully envisions athletic competitions in space and footballs made from stardust.
- The small 192-page book is mostly a fun, futuristic read about what Nike might be doing in 2073.
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Nike is preparing for the day the Olympics get hosted in outer space. Sort of.
In the new book “After all, there is No Finish Line,” the sportswear giant takes a step back from the daily business of sneaker drops, talking about the merits of direct sales, answering questions about the company’s recovery in China, and discussing bloated inventory levels to take a playful look 50 years down the road.
The small 192-page book is mostly a fun, futuristic read about what Nike might be doing in 2073. While not a roadmap of the next 50 years of Nike product releases, it’s a thought-provoking and revealing take on how the sportswear giant expects consumer behavior to change and how it’s getting ready.
Nike did not return an email from Insider seeking an interview about the book.
The book was edited by several Nike employees and includes contributions from some of Nike’s heaviest hitters, like Innovation President Thomas Clarke, Chief Design Officer John Hoke III, and Ron Faris, who previously ran the SNKRS app and who now oversees the company’s new Virtual Studio. Sam Grawe, who wrote the 2021 book Nike: Better is Temporary, is an editor and contributed essays.
The book has the familiar Nike refrains about the “limitless potential of sport” and a splash of the self-congratulatory, such as a note about the company being “always at the forefront of culture,” but it largely doesn’t take itself too seriously, conceding the “pages ahead may be laughably inaccurate” in 50 years.
Like any good thought exercise, the writers and editors didn’t put many guardrails on the brainstorm, veering into the sportswear possibilities of everything from invisibility to self-repairing tissue and underwater breathing.
“Given the rate of technological change, certain science fiction could soon become science realities,” the company writes.
Here are five of the book’s conversation-starting concepts.
The book’s contributors include Nike heavyweights, such as Innovation President Thomas Clarke.
Courtesy Nike
The Offworld Games
The Olympics occupy a lofty place in Nike culture.
Nike cofounder Bill Bowerman, the legendary Oregon track coach, also coached the 1972 Olympic track team. In his 2006 biography of Bowerman, Kenny Moore quotes Bowerman, who served in World War II, saying of the Olympics, “This is our answer to war.
”
The reverence for the international athletic competition isn’t going away. But in the future, it might no longer take place on earth.
In the book, the authors describe in a piece of short fiction an Olympic-like athletic competition called the “Offworld Games” where “planetary superstars” are “unshackled by gravity” and combine “skills from gymnastics, climbing, wrestling, and martial arts.”
The imagined event is hosted in Nike’s “flagship orbital facility.”
Fittingly, the company also foresees a line of Nike spacewear, “worn by so many travelers embarking for the deep cold of Mars and beyond.”
Lunar metals and footballs made from stardust
The galactic predictions don’t end there.
Nike sees all sorts of cosmic possibilities, especially when it comes to lunar materials, including the possibility of a “football made from stardust, or a bat made from metal harvested from space.”
On a more terrestrial level, Nike foresees clothing made from spider silk and the emergence of volcanic glass compounds.
Coral reefs could grow materials.
“Somewhere down the line, it’s not too outlandish to consider an entire garment or pair of shoes being grown instead of pieced together,” the authors write.
In the present, the company’s materials innovation is already accelerating. Nike’s business partners include Newlight Technologies, a California company that makes a carbon-negative substitute for plastic and leather.
Nike’s LeBron James Innovation Center features motion-capture cameras and force plates.
Courtesy Nike
A Shanghai deep-cold facility and an interactive running trail
Nike’s always been known for innovation, first at an R&D lab in Exeter, New Hampshire, and today in the massive LeBron James Innovation Center.
The facilities historically have used technology like motion-capture devices and force plates to study how the body moves.
Nike doesn’t see lab-based innovation slowing down. But it does see it spreading out.
The book describes the possibility of satellite research facilities around the world, including a “Shanghai deep-cold facility” used to test “ultrathin insulating fabrics” and a “desert lab near Nairobi” with dozens of running trails that offer “nearly infinite climbing routes,” complete with “sensing technologies” wired into the landscape that could measure and adjust to a runner’s speed, blood pressure, and heartbeat.
Nike could get into gamification, nudge theory, and MRIs of the brain
Since its earliest days, Nike has mostly paid attention to “below the neck” sports science, focusing on the body, not the mind. The next 50 years will be more holistic.
“Nike’s business cards of the future may well include titles like perception explorer, insight architect, sports neuroscientist, AI linguist, motivational psychologist, sensor designer, and nutrient coach,” the authors write.
The company could find itself exploring everything from the psychology of behavior modification to gamification and nudge theory. Nudge theory, or designing an environment to encourage a specific choice, is often associated with more objectionable outcomes like casino designs that keep visitors gambling.
Nike sees a future where it can be used to encourage healthier behaviors.
The result could be workouts “fine-tuned to our current physiological, metabolic, and hormonal state; a guided meditation or coaching session designed to help us meet short- or long-term goals; (and) a product whose colors change in response to our unique psychic needs.”
Democratizing sneaker access
Since cofounder Phil Knight sold his first pair of sneakers, Nike’s been a relatively simple business.
“You buy our product, we take your money,” the book’s authors write. But that basic “transactional relationship” is dissolving.
“Younger audiences expect more from the brands they engage with,” Nike writes.
What does that mean for Nike’s business?
The book is spare on details, but digital technologies like NFTs (virtual collectibles), immersive video games, and the metaverse could let consumers “participate more deeply” with Nike.
“Those within Nike view these developments as a means to democratize access, opportunity, and even value-creation and ownership,” the company writes. “Picture a marketplace for user-generated designs, avatars, or skins where the royalty doesn’t go to the biggest name, but to the unknown kid who had a flash of artistic inspiration.”
Michael Phelps appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the form of Nike
Phelps – the only 23-time Olympic champion in the history of sports / Michael Sohn / AP
American swimmer Michael Phelps appeared in Nike clothes on the cover of Sports Illustrated, although he has had it since 2010 a contract with another sports brand – Under Armor, writes Bloomberg. Phelps is the pride of Under Armor, Fortune notes, in total the company has signed sponsorship contracts with about 250 athletes.
Phelps is the only 23-time Olympic champion in the history of sports: he won 13 gold medals in individual championships and 10 medals in relay races; as well as the absolute record holder in the history of the Olympic Games in terms of the number of medals.
Under Armor must be furious, although they don’t advertise it, Bloomberg quotes former U.S. Olympic Committee marketing director Rick Burton. Phelps’ agent Peter Carlisle of Octagon Worldwide and a spokesman for Under Armor said the swimmer was required by the U.S. Olympic Committee to wear a Nike wing logo. Nike is the official sponsor of the country’s Olympic team. There was no such requirement, three people familiar with the situation assured Bloomberg. A spokesman for the committee itself did not respond to the agency’s request, while a spokesman for Sports Illustrated declined to comment.
Cover of Sports Illustrated /Simon Bruty / Sports Illustrated via AP
The photoshoot lasted only 15 minutes and was held in the press room of the Olympic Park in Rio, Bloomberg cites a person who was present there.
Phelps came to the photo shoot right after the official press conference of the US Olympic Committee, where he was supposed to wear a Nike uniform. At the same time, on the leotard of American gymnast Simone Biles and on the clothes of swimmer Kathy Ledecky, who, along with Phelps, pose on the cover of the magazine, Nike emblems are not visible.
There are many complicated rules and conventions about what and when Olympic athletes can wear during the Games, says Carlisle. The actions of athletes are constantly analyzed and interpreted, he explained. If Phelps needed to dress in a Nike uniform, he did a poor job, Bloomberg points out.
The audience of Sports Illustrated is about 18.2 million people. Thus, Nike advertised for about $ 453,000, calculated the sponsorship and analytical company Apex Marketing Group. In addition, Nike benefited from the awkward position that Under Armor found itself in. Both companies are fighting for contracts with athletes like Steph Curry: the American basketball player used to work with Nike, but his career flourished with Under Armor.
The world’s largest sportswear brand, Nike has spent the most on the Rio Olympics of any sports brand, according to Fortune. Despite this, the shares of its competitors – Adidas and Under Armor, which are not official sponsors of the Games – are growing faster, the magazine adds.
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