Nike’s troubles with uniforms extend beyond Major League Baseball and Euro 2024. According to Reuters, a number of American women who will be competing in track and field at the Paris Olympics have complained that their Nike-designed kit is scanty.
Steeplechaser Colleen Quigley has told Reuters that “they are absolutely not made for performance,” while pole-vaulter Katie Moon, who is under contract with Nike, has Tweeted on X that the kit was “concerning” but that the women were being given options and that she herself prefers briefs to shorts.
A counterpoint comes from hurdler Anna Cockrell, who says that she “had the opportunity to share feedback and insights” and that during testing, the fit “allowed me to move freely and without distraction, and I love how the look represents Team USA.”
Nike has sent an email to Reuters explaining the options mentioned by Moon. Unlike the one for Tokyo, the leotard for the Paris Olympics comes in brief and short forms.
A spokesman for USA Track & Field (USATF) tells Reuters that “athlete options and choices were the driving force for USATF in the planning process with Nike.”
The company introduced its national and federation kits this month at an event in Paris called “Nike On Air,” with 40 or so athletes in attendance, some of them there to serve as models. Nike describes the kits as “the most athlete-informed, data-driven and visually unified the company has ever produced” and says it used “4D motion-capture data, algorithmically honed with pixel-level precision,” to design a separate kit for each event while keeping in mind “the distinct identities and diverse communities each country and sport represent.”
According to Chief Innovation Officer John Hoke, Nike designed “a range of silhouettes” for “various sport disciplines, body types, and sizes, prioritizing performance and maximum breathability,” and worked “directly with athletes throughout every stage of the design process.”
There are almost 50 items in total for men and women, and Nike deems them to have met “athletes’ exact needs and specifications.”
Is this new?
The funny thing is, the Olympics have, if anything, developed a sense of modesty since the days of antiquity. As the official website itself relates, at the original games – taking place every four years from 776 BC to at least AD 393 – “all athletes competed naked,” boxers being “urged to avoid attacking the on-display male genitals.”
In addition to being modest, the modern Olympics are soft. Here’s more from the official site on the ancient ways:
- “Boxers who could not be separated could opt for klimax, a system whereby one fighter was granted a free hit and then vice-versa – a toss of a coin decided who went first”
- “There were only two rules in the pankration [wrestling] – no biting and no gouging”
- “Corporal punishment awaited those guilty of a false start on the track”
- “There were no points, no time limits and no weight classifications in the boxing”
- “Athletes in the combat sports had to indicate their surrender by raising their index fingers – at times they died before they could do this”
Moreover, the old wrestlers competed “covered in oil,” which requirement recalls the lurid spectacle of mud wrestling.
A key difference, though, is that back in the day, all the athletes were men, with a few remarkable exceptions. (Because a woman could own a chariot, a Spartan king’s daughter, Kyniska, could compete in and win the chariot races of 396 and 392 BC.)
Apparently, even the ancient Greeks balked at the idea of nude – or scantily clad? – female athletes.
