2008 Nike Beijing ’08 Innovation Summit:

The Unrivaled Platform to Innovate

words by Nick DePaula

Oftentimes at Nike and at other footwear brands, a season or initiative comes along that demands extra attention and innovation, whether it be the fall’s new team shoe built for a brotherhood, or a hand-crafted and deeply sculpted twenty-third rendition of the venerated Air Jordan line. Developed over the past several years to be launched this summer in competition, Nike was met with perhaps its most difficult task yet: creating twenty-three unique footwear items for the world’s greatest elite athletes to wear in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games for twenty-eight specific events – a challenge no other brand has ever dared.

After outfitting just eleven sports in the 2004 Athens Games, Nike wanted to offer product for athletes representing forty countries across literally every sport and event. From Taekwando to Rowing, and of course to more traditionally classic Olympic sports like Basketball and Weightlifting, you can expect to see Nike footwear worn by each sport’s most advanced athletes. As Kris Aman, Nike Global General Manager of the 2008 Olympics puts it, Beijing will be “an unrivaled platform to innovate.” They’ve developed new cushioning technologies, new upper containment materials and also new apparel solutions for heat dissipation and climate control. The innovation here never stops. The increase in sport participation from Nike means their products will be worn by more than 7,000 athletes at the Olympic Games, and over 10,000 athletes were interviewed in conceptualizing and designing the footwear. “Nike really knows and better serves the athlete than anyone,” says Mark Parker, Nike CEO and President.

In getting to the final stages of production for this cohesive collection, Nike began developing and designing footwear for the Games over three years ago. Just after the 2004 Athens Games had closed, the endless creativity bunkered across the 193-acre Nike World Campus in Beaverton, Oregon began grouping and teaming up across all categories to provide their most innovative and compelling footwear story yet. The company has seen more innovations than any other brand over its thirty-six year history, from the first ever Air-cushioned Nike Tailwind in 1978, to the first basketball shoe designed to have no break-in period in the Air Jordan III, and even to the decade-old, hyper-responsive Zoom Air cushioning unit that no other brand can match up with today. Despite all of the company’s achievements, milestones and industry standard-raising innovations, Nike still set out to push the envelope even more this summer, under the direction of Sean McDowell, Creative Director for Nike’s Olympic Footwear. Nike, named after the Greek Goddess of Victory, also aimed to pay homage to the origins of the Olympics, naming the majority of the footwear in Greek. The premium focus for all footwear was on lightweight, cushioning and reaction time, allowing for an athlete across all sports to perform at their best in this summer’s 29th Olympic Games.

The two most heralded innovations that Nike created specifically for the Olympics are Lunar Foam and Flywire Technology. Developed in conjunction with NASA engineers over the past few years, Lunar Foam is a high-rebound and resilient spongy foam that is actually used in the seats of NASA’s space shuttles. While Kobe Bryant might demand a light shoe that allows him to explode forty inches off the hardwood for a crowd-silencing dunk, NASA’s space shuttles must reduce weight wherever possible in order to leave earth’s orbit; quite a difference. So in creating Lunar Foam, Nike mixed Ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA for short) with Nitrate rubber, allowing for a foam cushioning unit that is 30% lighter than Phylite, which Nike has been using for over the past decade. Lunar Foam’s responsive properties stem from the rubber compound included in it, and the lower impact and more cushioned ride along with a lighter weight are certainly a welcomed innovation. In basketball shoes, it is implemented much like how Air-Sole and Zoom Air units have been in the past, as a sculpted unit embedded into the midsole just under the ball of the foot.

Flywire is not so much a cushioning development as it pertains more to lightweight containment along the upper. No matter what sport an elite athlete is participating in, reaction time and the ability to change direction are crucially important, whether you’re splitting a double-team in the halfcourt and headed straight to the rim or you’re stopping on a dime to return a shuttlecock in the game of Badminton. After examining the history of bridge designs, Jay Meschter, Innovation Director of Nike’s Innovation Kitchen, noticed an advancement along the timeline that would go on to shape the development of Flywire. From more traditional brick structures that didn’t age well, to our more modern cable-suspended bridges, which can support not only the weight of the bridge across vast distances like in San Francisco, but also the weight of massive daily traffic, he discovered that a structure can become more supportive when it is designed with, in the case of footwear, long strands for support along the side of a shoe. Meschter realized that by creating a cradle for the foot in a similarly arranged alignment along the shoe’s lateral and medial sides, any given sport’s unique and unpredictable movements could be better supported for quicker reaction time. The result is Flywire.

With a thin film of Polyurethane providing the structure of each Flywire panel, the thin strands that provide the support are made of a material called Vectran. Over six years ago, Meschter first aligned strands of nylon along a shoe last as he conceptualized Flywire, and after much deliberation over several materials, Vectran proved to be the most supportive material to fit the project’s needs of support, light weight and flex resistance. It was actually down to Kevlar and Vectran as the strand material of choice to be used in Flywire, after Nylon and several other fabric strands proved to be far too flimsy. In Vectran’s favor, Kevlar, when flexed, can lose up to 25% of its strength, compared to 0% strength loss in Vectran. When used in product like athletic footwear, any strength loss is crucial to athletes who depend on tenths and hundredths of seconds in competition. Another major factor in deciding upon a material for the groundbreaking upper construction was also the measured breaking strength between the two. Vectran boasts a higher breaking strength than Kevlar, requiring more force to compromise the high-performance multifilament yarn. Most clutch also is Vectran’s ability to not only allow for weight reduction in Nike’s products, but also the fact that the liquid polymer based material is naturally very thermally stable. In an extreme climate like that of Beijing, which is being forecasted to host a sweltering summer nearing triple digit temperature with 70% humidity, it’s also very important that Vectran can perform under any circumstance. While it seems like lots of tech talk and the material to the naked eye may appear to be just a thin layer along the shoe with nicely placed weaves, in fact there’s quite a bit of technology and research that goes into constructing something as performance-fused as Flywire.

Several shoes in the Olympic footwear catalogue will feature the panel construction, and most notably the Hyperdunk in basketball, as well as the Zoom Victory Spike and Zoom Victory+ in Track & Field will offer its athletes the lightest, most supportive footwear products that Nike has ever created.

Click here to see what else we have in the “2008 Olympic” category. You’ll catch more features on upcoming Olympic footwear as well as more interviews… and of course a few surprises.

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