[ad_1]
Since then 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy, USA athletes Olympic the podiums are worn by Nike. Nike clothes. Nike shoes. Not just on the podium, either; U.S. team athletes who compete in half of the trials, from track and field to football to speed skating, wear a Nike kit. The agreement, signed in 2019, will keep this ubiquity at least at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Swoosh, as I said, is powerful.
But this almost ubiquity poses a challenge: staying ahead of the curve in the said swoosh. As performance technology progresses at a rapid pace, you need to start thinking about the gears that athletes need next global four-year competition?
About four years, as it happens. “As soon as the closing ceremony is over and the flame is gone,” says Nike chief designer John Hoke, “our work for next summer’s Olympics begins.” That’s not just about marketing. The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games ended on August 21 of that year; in September, part of Nike’s design team was in Japan, meeting with the Tokyo Olympic Committee to see where the collective heads of its members were.
A couple of things cleared up very quickly. The first was that it would be very far from Tokyo River. The Brazilian city of August would be familiar to anyone who has been in Miami for the winter: the average highs are around 78 degrees Fahrenheit and a break from the usual humidity. Tokyo in August? Not so much. Hot, limited, uf.
The second thing the Tokyo commission made clear was their seriousness about sustainability. This was not new to the Olympic organizers — starting with the 2000 Sydney Games, officials imposed measures to compensate for the undeniable impact of being a host city — but Tokyo had some new measures in mind. They hired architect Kengo Kuma, known for his work in trying to live in balance with his surroundings, to design the national central stadium for the Games. The medal was committed not only to recycled materials, but also to recycled mobile phones.
All of this was for the ears of the music group. Previously they tried to design Olympic equipment with a similar ecological curvature, as a runner for the 2000 Sydney Games made with recycled bottles, but the intent and execution did not always coincide. “He didn’t look great, he wasn’t great,” Hoke says, looking at that singlet. But now? With a few more Olympics and two more decades of science and design innovation? Tokyo would allow for a balance between performance and principle.
Nike introduced the shoes and clothing last year, a few months before this one Covid-19 Pandemic He pushed for the 2020 Games in the summer of 2021 — he wants to do just that. Technically Hoke takes into account what it calls “atomic levels,” using a computational design to provide sports that are fit or breathable for the second skin, depending on the specific needs of the sport. It also indicates that the company’s biggest show is that sustainability doesn’t have to mean sacrifice, aesthetic, athletic or otherwise.
So far, of course, we know that these 2016 meetings on weather hazards in Tokyo have already been proven. The tests conducted in August 2019 had such high temperatures the rowers endured heat exhaustion and the triathletes were doing worse. The Olympic Committee took this year’s marathon 500 miles north to Sappor in response, believing it would not be such a wild climate.
The heat is the devil for the track and the field; track conditions (and, uh, field) can be more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit above ambient temperature. Nike’s clothing category wants to exorcise that devil with a new material called Aeroswift, a micro-ribbed version of its popular Dri-Fit technology. It’s like a black corduroy that’s incredibly thin for rock tightening. The peaks of these cords perform two functions except: creating a confusing effect that moves the air under the fabric under the fabric and giving the fabric an almost lenticular two-tone appearance that seems to glow when the athlete is in motion.
[ad_2]
Source link
