Kenyan runner Faith Kipyegon, 31, almost made history at Stade Sébastien Charléty in Paris on Thursday night in her attempt to run a mile in under 4 minutes. The Nike athlete barely missed the feat, though she broke her own world record, finishing in 4:06:91.
The three-time Olympics champion’s previous time was 4:07.64, a record she set in 2023.
The athlete ran in high-tech gear engineered by Nike specifically for Kipyegon: a FlyWeb sports bra, a bespoke Fly Suit, and a spike dubbed the Victory Elite FK.
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Created with computational design and made out of 3D printed TPU, the bra was described as “friendly” by Kipyegon, according to Janett Nichol, vice president of apparel innovation at Nike, during a preview. “We’ve spoken to many athletes over the years. We’ve never heard that as feedback, which we think is fantastic,” she added.
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“We wanted to take a big leap forward on the bra. Sports bras are apparent in any female-athlete sport, and for those of us who wear them, we know that our choices, while they may be vast, have a lot of limitations. One of those is sweat. Most bras are made with multiple layers to create support, and you’re going to have more sweat that’s trapped in the body,” said Nichol.
Her team at Nike looked to digital printing, a tool that’s been used in footwear, and found a new way to build a sports bra that’s lightweight, breathable and optimized for moisture and temperature management.
“We’ve never used it for apparel, and so it required us to look at a couple of things. First, we had to look at the actual width of the TPU that we were using to create this bra because we want it to be soft and feel good on the skin. What we love about this is that by leveraging digital computational design, we’re able to create a bra that is engineered to the exact specifications of an athlete,” Nichol added.
As for the Fly Suit, which consists of a single-piece suit as well as complementary arm and leg sleeves and headband, Amy Jones Vaterlaus, vice president of women’s research at Nike sport research lab, said the team used computer simulation and wind-tunnel testing to make sure it could truly help Kipyegon make a difference during her historic attempt in Paris.
“One of the big unlocks that we realized is that we needed to focus on how to make the surface of the body more aerodynamic, especially as we consider functional apparel. When we started, we started thinking of how to create a material that is faster, that also moves with her body, and that is not restrictive,” said Vaterlaus.
The Nike team brought many different silhouettes and prototypes to Kenya for Kipyegon to choose from, and then a look was built to cater to her needs during the run.
A big issue to tackle was to minimize drag from headwinds, especially in the torso area, said Vaterlaus. The 13 pacers, all elite runners themselves, also helped shield her from any wind during the attempt.
“She’s running at 15 miles per hour, which is 24 kilometers per hour, and she encounters headwinds. It hits her body, it’s splitting, and it creates turbulent flow behind, and that’s a negative drag or force pulling her backwards. That’s why it’s really important to have it as slick and smooth as possible, to wrap the air around her as quickly as possible,” she added.
The second method, which involved adding more aerodynamic interventions to the suit, involved these 3D printed nodes in high-drag areas such as the collarbone, the hip and on leg sleeves.
“What these do is they create these eddies, so you create your turbulence that then wraps the air around smoother. When we first went to Kenya, they were much bigger. They weren’t in these exact zones. We did a lot of optimization once we had our foundation of the silhouette and started layering on these nodes,” said Vaterlaus.
The last component to Kipyegon’s history-making night was the custom-made Victory Elite FK spike.
In the words of Nike’s running footwear product manager Elliott Heath, the model comes with a taller, tuned Air Zoom unit at the forefoot along with a lighter carbon fiber plate, advanced foams and six titanium spikes. A new upper makes use of ultra-lightweight yarns, and the FK mark appearing on one of the two plates is short for both Kipyegon and “Fastest Known,” with the other featuring the inscription of the goddess of victory, or Nike, as seen in the Louvre.
“The athlete is the most important part, and you try to match up the product in the moment with that. And that’s what comes together, in terms of these moonshot ideas. The great part about having a very singular focus like this is that you don’t have to worry about a lot of those other things. It’s just about putting her at the center and what’s the absolute best for her,” said Heath.
Nike has been on Kipyegon’s side since the beginning of her professional career, and this time, Heath said she was not afraid to be vulnerable and challenged the team to search for more.
“Instead of just taking something and making little tweaks to it, we took the whole shoe apart, looked at every single component, and looked at different options for it. We even looked at other completely different shoes. We went to test with her in Africa with things that tested well in the lab, and she helped us narrow down the options, and ultimately it became the Victory Elite FK,” he continued.
Roger Bannister was the first person to run a mile in under 4 minutes in 1954, and 1,755 men have now crossed that threshold. For women, a 4:30 mile is widely considered the rough equivalent for the same distance. The thinking in the sport is that it may take another 10 to 30 years for a woman to break that barrier.
Kipyegon’s attempt was livestreamed on Prime Video, as well as Nike’s accounts on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Douyin. A documentary series on her preparation premiered June 20 on Prime Video.
On the day of her run, fellow Kenyan running legend Eliud Kipchoge, who was the first person to ever run under two hours in the marathon during Nike’s Breaking2 event in 2019, said he has been a mentor to Kipyegon on her 4-minute mile run attempt.
“We have a great team in Kenya. We believe in teamwork. We believe in coming together. We believe in creating a community of teammates. So the whole team and I have come together to train with Kipyegon, making sure that her mind is calm enough to handle the training,” he said.