Nike’s Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT% for the Tokyo Olympics.Photo: Nike
Nike is making sure Team USA athletes have the keys to success — on their feet.
Many of Team USA’s track and field athletes will wear Nike’s sneakers including the racing shoeAir Zoom Alphafly Next%, theAir Zoom Vaporfly Next% 2and theracing spike ZoomX Dragonfly, among other products, for the competition in Japan. The products have been released in a specialRawdacious colorway palette, which includes white, pink blast, total orange and bright crimson.
“We’re using more optimistic, fluorescent colors to highlight the technology,” Rachel Bull, senior footwear product director, Nike running, tells PEOPLE.
The “revolutionary” revamped products incorporate a lot of performance considerations, like comfort in the Vaporfly Next%2, Bull says. The product designers and innovators also expanded their focus from running to the field events, bringing the Air Zoom to the long jump.
“We’ve been able to take this concept and just spread it across so many different disciplines, which is going to benefit more and more athletes,” Bull says.
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Nike first launched its products, unofficially, at the 1972 U.S. track and field rials, with event-specific technology coming in the years that followed — including the first full-length spike play, the Ultra Zoom, which helped Carl Lewis become the first American to win four gold medals at an Olympics since 1936.
Designers for the brand looked to historical precedent like that for the Rawdacious colorway line.
“Some of our most pinnacle innovations and some of the latest innovations, it’s years, if not decades of building, I would say,” Holts explains, adding that the time and care put into products has helped Nike develop an “equal relationship and partnership” of trust with Olympic athletes.
Both Holts and Bull are excited to watch as athletes make their dreams come true.
“They’ve been waiting for it, for now, five years and four years is a long way in itself,” Bull tells PEOPLE. “So to wait for that long, I think we are just all in for them and doing our bit to create the best product.”
To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, visitTeamUSA.org. Watch the Tokyo Olympics beginning July 23rd and the Tokyo Paralympics beginning August 24th on NBC.
source: people.com
