Nike's The Record

When Sha’Carri Richardson stepped onto the red carpet at Athlos London this week, her coat ignited under the flash, reflected silver between each snap of the shutter, then settled back into something resembling a dense fog — just as it was built to do. Every Swarovski® crystal on the explosive two-time Olympic medalist’s custom look was applied by hand; every line of boning was sewn in to shape a silhouette no pattern alone could hold.

“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.

Check ball: 3-on-3 basketball is back on the world stage after debuting in Tokyo in 2021. Allisha Gray, a guard for the Atlanta Dream, represented the U.S. on the squad that took home gold. For Allisha, 3-on-3 is a mix of traditional strategy, unrelenting pace and quick thinking. As she prepares for Paris, we asked her to give us the rundown on the game’s basic rules and the important differences that make 3-on-3 distinct from the traditional 5-on-5. It’s a 10-minute game played by ones and twos.

If Cade Cunningham seems comfortable with his back against the wall, trust, he’s not resting. In the first Game 7 of Cunningham’s career, Motor City watched with bated breath as its stoic leader — two years removed from a 28-game losing streak, six weeks removed from a collapsed lung — willed the Pistons to their first postseason series win in 18 years. Despite being only 24 years of age, this was classic Cade. Bruising bully ball accented by ballerina pirouettes.

On August 29, 16 young players from cities around the world stepped onto a court in Shanghai for the Jordan Brand The One Finals. Each had fought their way through local qualifiers and semifinals, playing head-to-head past hundreds of young hoopers, to earn a spot among the final eight players in the men’s and women’s divisions. With no teammates, no substitutions and no collective identity to fall back on, the hoopers waged 1v1 battles to earn a singular title: The One. Watching courtside?

And that was the whole point. The 15-week Nike Innovation Farm Team, which kicked off in April at Nike’s Philip H. Knight Campus, was created to help Nike innovators uncover the levers behind ultra-endurance running. The science of endurance performance under two hours is fairly well understood. The longer a runner goes, however, the less we know about what causes some to succeed and others to crumble.

Look closely at the front of a Jack Purcell shoe and you’ll notice a small detail that sets it apart. Unlike its big brother — the Chuck Taylor, defined by its signature white toe cap — the JP carries a stripe of color, a thin rubber inlay set into the toe. Lean in, and its corners curl upward, revealing something unexpected: a cheeky grin.

Quenlin Blackwell has always understood that style is a form of storytelling. What began when she was a teenager in suburban Texas, soaring to fame posting viral videos on Vine from her bedroom, has since grown into a career spanning comedy, hosting, modeling, acting and design, each new chapter another expression of the same restless creativity. Today, she commands millions of followers across social platforms.

On May 23, 2017, Jonathon Riley dropped his Skylon 11s into a Nike shoe-recycling bin. The well-worn, well-loved sneakers were the last of a stash the elite runner had spent years stockpiling, buying up every pair he could find once the shoe was discontinued. He’d run thousands of miles in various Skylons, first as a professional runner and later as a Nike footwear developer.

With one-of-one projects like these, Giorgi understands that every successful collaboration starts with listening. “It’s really important that these collections look and feel authentic to the athlete: who they want to be, what kind of vision they want to bring to life for their fans,” explains Giorgi.