High-Tech Gear for Olympic Athletes

Tag : soccer stocking

By Paul Hochman

Beyond the double glass doors , out past the marble fountain burbling near the Tiger Woodsbuilding, a billion perfect blades of grass stood at attention.Songbirds twittered. Sunlight shone. Flags fluttered over twinsoccer fields so plush the pitches looked like swimming pools. Allwas as it should be on Nike's Beaverton, Oregon, campus: perfect.
Which was when one of Nike's prototype Olympic track shoes,code-named Flywire, went to pieces. A test athlete on the 400-meterMichael Johnson test oval, told to push the top-secret racingspikes to their limit, had done just that. "The shoe blew out onthe side of his forefoot," says Sean McDowell, Nike's designdirector for Olympic footwear, "like a balloon."
But in that breakdown three years ago, Nike caught a whiff ofengineering ambrosia: a loophole in the Universal Law of SportsTechnology, which says unequivocally that you can build somethinginfinitely light or infinitely strong but not both; that there areI-beams and there are feathers, and you can't build one from theother. No exceptions.
Except in this case.
"He said it was the most amazing 300 meters he'd ever experienced,"McDowell says of the test runner's reaction to his first strides inthe ethereal prototype. "Like he was running naked. Like he hadspikes growing out of his feet."
Before that day, the lightest pair of track shoes ever made --Michael Johnson's golden Nike spikes -- weighed 112 grams. Evennow, they are considered a marvel of shoe engineering because theywere designed to hold together just long enough for Johnson to makeit across the finish line, and maybe a few meters more. But theFlywire prototype that disintegrated on that Oregon track weighed67 grams per pair, or a little over 1 ounce each. They were anastonishing 41% lighter.
Flywire, which will debut at the Beijing Games, uses only thebarest exoskeleton of wispy, high-tech filaments -- roughly 7linear feet of thread, affixed to an ultrathin fabric scrim -- toprovide its structure and shape (think of a space-age Romansandal). With the usual need for supporting material reduced almostto zero, the shoe is not only featherlight, but also radicallysimple, fast, and cheap to build. So while it promises to improveracing performance, it also hints at dramatically lower productioncosts for everyday shoes -- a construction technique that springsdirectly from a designer's imagination, flows through a computerchip, then flowers in three dimensions in a matter of seconds. "Itopens up new frontiers," says Jay Meschter, Flywire's leaddesigner. "Analog stitching is gone. This is a digitally programmedshoe. Everybody realizes this is a smarter way to build shoes, andit's just going to pervade everything we do."
Nike is not alone in its Olympic cries of "Eureka!" Adidas, Mizuno,Gill Athletics (the world's largest manufacturer of track-and-fieldequipment), Speedo, and many others have been working feverishly torewrite the Universal Law of Sports Technology. And by August, allof them will have performed another amazing feat: collapsing thetimeline that separates a new Olympic concept -- often representingmillions of dollars in up-front R&D costs -- from its return oninvestment. Suddenly, Olympic innovators will be able to make thelong jump between the design studio and the cash register. About aweek before the lights go up on the opening ceremonies, you'll beable to find a pair of Flywire HyperDunk basketball shoes at aNiketown near you.
What you'll discover here are 18 technological masterworks -- fromarchery bows to BMX gear -- and a behind-the-scenes look at howthey were created, including a rare tour of Nike's supersecretInnovation Kitchen. Each item represents a dramatic technologicalinsight, a critical increment of leverage over the competition.Such improvements are hard enough to come by but even rarer in thetradition-bound context of the Olympics.
Take Adidas, for example: With just two years until the openingceremonies in China, the German giant was struggling to conjure anew track spike for its star Texan runner, the 400-meter goldmedalist Jeremy Wariner. After watching hours of super-slow-motionfootage of Wariner's quirky gait, the company decided to replacehis Pookie spike, which helped Wariner win in Athens (and nearlyevery 400-meter race he has entered since). Called Lone Star andsporting a crown insignia to signify Wariner's leadership in thesport, the new shoe has the following unorthodox feature: It liststo port.
"Most middle-distance races are won in the turns," explains MicLussier, the French-Canadian leader of the Adidas Innovation Team,or aIT, which developed the shoe. And track runners never, everturn to the right. So Lussier's 50 biomechanical engineers,industrial designers, and electromechanical experts set aboutmaking asymmetrical spikes for Wariner. The skewed shoes would befounded on ultralight carbon plates made of microscopic nanotubes20 times stronger than steel. And they would "redirect the line offorce that loads on the outside of his right foot," Lussier says,"and send it inward, toward his big toe." In other words, Wariner'snew right shoe would accelerate to the left.
"The idea is based on the same asymmetrical suspension you see in aNascar stock car," Lussier says. "It's really quite amazing."
Even before he pulled the trigger on his company's pneumatic javelin gun, Gill Athletics' vicepresident of engineering, Jeff Watry, knew he had created abreakthrough Olympic spear. Still, he was curious to see just howfar his new design could fly, so he disconnected the catapult'sregulator and hooked the gun directly to the factory's compressedair.
"Uh-oh," he said to his team as they watched the javelin disappearover the company's headquarters in Champaign, Illinois. "That'sfarther than we thought." The new 800-gram OTE Composite FX landeda quarter mile away, in a pond behind another company's warehouse.
Watry's bench testing had already shown him that the OTE (one oftwo primary javelins you'll see during the men's event in Beijing;the other is made by the $7 billion Swedish materials-technologycompany Sandvik AB) had struck a near-perfect balance betweenweight and strength. But his challenge was not to make somethinglight and aerodynamic; it was to design something light andaerodynamic that wouldn't destroy the athlete throwing it.
When an elite thrower releases a javelin correctly, it "goesthrough a point," flying out of the hand in a straight line at a40-degree incline, as if it were being thrown through a bull's-eye:no wobble, no flutter. But a javelin shaft typically vibrates fortwo seconds after it's released, and since vibration hindersaerodynamic lift (by disturbing the flow of air around the shaft),many engineers began experimenting with javelins built of pure,vibration-absorbing carbon. There was only one problem: Pure-carbonjavelins may not vibrate, but they "kill your thrower," Watry says.Instead of being released as a two-second-long flutter, all thatenergy is directed backward, into the athlete's body -- with direconsequences. "The guy would last about three months before hisshoulder blew out," Watry explains. Shoulder and elbow injuries maybe endemic to the sport, but all-carbon shafts made it downrightunhealthy to throw a spear.
Watry's solution: He made an aluminum shaft (for elbow-friendlyflexibility and "softness") and wrapped it in a spirally wovencarbon sheet -- a giant toothpick swaddled in a carbon-fiberfishnet stocking. The 50-50 mix of materials reduced the forcesexerted on the thrower's elbow, and cut the OTE's vibration time by10%, a big margin by Olympic standards.
If that all sounds like a lot of labor for an item that will sellonly about 30 copies (at $785 a pop) in the next year, remember:The Olympics are the mother of all loss leaders, and if everythinggoes well, Watry says, Gill-branded javelins will be on all threelevels of the medal stand this summer. That's the hottest 60-secondspot on television for the company's vast product line.
Speedo's brand image hit a high-water mark in 1972 when a mustachioed Mark Spitz won seven gold medalsin the company's star-spangled nylon-elastane briefs. But theNottingham, England -- based company's success in the Olympic poolhad begun with its first world record in 1932 -- and has beenconstant since. For example, during three consecutive Olympics,from 1968 to 1976, the brand was worn by an estimated 70% ofmedalists, including 27 of 29 gold medalists in Mexico City.
If there has been a dark side to Speedo's hegemony, it lies in itsproduct's minimalism. The mere word "Speedo" conjures images ofplump, pallid Germans basking on the Côte d'Azur in unter -size beachwear. Today, however, Speedo looms large. In February,the company introduced a full-body swimsuit so fast it has inspiredregulatory scrutiny, international controversy, athlete-sponsorshipdefections, and -- in Italy, not surprisingly -- fist shaking.
The controversy springs from the way Speedo outfoxed the rulegoverning swimsuits: FINA, the sport's international federation,bars suits that create buoyancy. No suit may "lift" a swimmer ormake her lighter. No air bubbles. No fins or spoilers. Given twoswimmers of equal power, however, the smaller one slips through thewater faster. So Speedo's new LZR (pronounced "laser") Racerdoesn't lift; it squeezes, exploiting a swimming-pool loophole inthe Universal Law of Sports Technology. If the law insists that youcan have something lighter or stronger, but not both, Speedodecided to make its swimmers "lighter" by making its suit stronger,using a NASA-tested black sheathing that compresses the body with70 times more force -- 7 kilograms per meter -- than thenylon-elastane standard. And the suit doesn't just make swimmerssmaller, it makes them sleeker, too: Speedo used the powerfulmaterial to remold athletes into a more ideal hydrodynamic shape.Working in water flumes in New Zealand and test facilities inAustralia, and using computational fluid dynamics software inventedby Ansys, the company determined where a swimmer's "form drag"(turbulence caused by a body's shape) is most acute. It theninserted slippery, polyurethane panels to compress and reshapethose body parts -- buttocks, breasts, upper thighs -- mostresponsible for the drag.
When the LZR Racer appeared at the world short-course championshipsin Manchester, England, in April, the swimming world went off thedeep end. While the LZR Racer was FINA-approved and available toany athlete who wanted one (including you, as of this fall), it wasclearly faster than offerings from competitors such as TYR, Adidas,Mizuno, and Nike. There were rumors of elite athletes jilting theirsponsors on the pool deck and slipping into a Speedo. Italian coachAlberto Castagnetti claimed use of the suit was the equivalent of"technological doping." Head American coach Mark Schubert saysAmericans sponsored by other brands will have "a black-and-whitedecision" when they get to Beijing: "The money or the gold medal."German swimmer Thomas Rupprath went so far as to suggest apostasy-- that his country's swimming federation dump German-made Adidassuits in favor of Speedo's. "Otherwise," he says, "we will sinkcompletely into mediocrity." As of late May, 41 world records hadbeen set since the LZR Racer was introduced: 37 of those swimmerswere wearing it.
Nowhere do the extreme technical precision and naked commercial yearning of Olympic researchcoexist more naturally than at Nike. And this year, Nike isproducing Olympic gear on a larger and vastly messier scale than atany other time in its history: The company will introduce 68event-specific shoes for all 28 sports and their variousdisciplines in Beijing (up from 11 sports in Athens); newhigh-temperature-specific apparel for USA Track & Field and USABasketball uniforms; and outfits for more than 120 individualcountries and federations.
Nike's global manager for Beijing, Kris Aman, is charged withpreparing the company for the Games and beyond. In what he calls a"two-headed monster of process management," Nike has decided tooffer nearly all of its Olympic innovations to everyday consumersin September. (Nike's primary competitor, Adidas, will also offermany of its Olympic shoes at retail this August, throughdistributor Eastbay Inc.)
But the new Olympic idea with the biggest commercial potential isFlywire -- not because every kid will want the shoe, but becauseFlywire reinvents how shoes are made.
The inspiration for the new construction came from the cables on asuspension bridge. Rather than cords of steel, Flywire uses thin,strong-as-steel threads of Vectran, placed in fan-shaped clustersof between 10 and 20 strands, each about 3 inches in length. Thestrands are positioned at key points -- the forefoot, the heel, andso on -- and anchored to the shoe only at the ends; a scrim betweenthe foot and the filaments keeps out rocks and debris but has nolarger structural role. Up close, you can see through a Flywireshoe in the same way you can see through a house that's just beenframed with two-by-fours.
Predictably, a shoe made of thread and a slip of fabric isincredibly light. "When I tossed one up in the air," NBA MVP KobeBryant says of his Flywire-based HyperDunk, "I wasn't sure it wasgoing to come back down." The surprise lies in how strong the newconstruction is -- and how Flywire could change Nike, maybe eventhe shoe industry itself.
Flywire lead designer Jay Meschter's stroke of genius was to stopthinking of a shoe as something assembled and start thinking of itas something that is, well, printed. When Meschter connected thetwo ideas of filaments and strength, his mind leaped to embroiderymachines, which, he realized, print out lines and shapes usingcolored thread stitches rather than ink. If Meschter could stitchin 3-D form the cabling that holds up a suspension bridge, andanchor the ultrathin "cables" around a foot shape, he'd be able tocreate an ultralight shoe in the same time it took to stitchsomebody's name on a shirt.
"When we worked out the kinks," he says, "we realized what makesthis so exciting: This embroidery machine is literally a printerfor shoes. Most of [a Flywire shoe's] design can take place in acomputer; you make decisions on-screen about where you're placingreinforcement, and then you trial the shoe as a 'printout.' "
No more laboriously handcrafted one-off prototypes. No more fabricspainstakingly selected for the right blend of weight and strength.Now, if a new shoe needs tweaking, all a designer has to do is addanother filament to the design and hit PRINT .
The impact of Flywire could be huge. There have been rumors thatthe new technique is so inexpensive it could allow Nike to returnsome of its manufacturing to the United States from China, thecompany's largest manufacturing and materials source, drasticallyreducing labor and manufacturing costs. And like most miracles ofdesign, Flywire did not spring from some gleaming white mountaintop-- it came limping out of a cruddy backwater, a tiny subset of asubcube on the Nike campus called the Innovation Kitchen.
To find the Kitchen, look for this welcoming sign on the right side of the lobby of the Mia Hammbuilding:
NOBODY GETS IN TO SEE THE COOKS.
NOT NOBODY
NOT NOHOW
POSITIVELY NO TOURS
When the doors swing open, the first color you see is blood red.It's probably paint, of course, but the crimson entryway isnevertheless a reminder that about 90% of the concepts hatched hereare mortally wounded before they get to the lobby. Inside, theKitchen is a disaster area: a jumble of blown-out test spikes, arejected pair of Bryant's new HyperDunks, tickets to a Claptonconcert, a René Magritte poster. But this ratty little warren ofoffices -- the only place in Nike's hypermanicured campus whereyou'll find chaos -- has been the source of some of the company'sgreatest hits: Michael Johnson's golden spikes, Cathy Freeman'sfamous speed suit, and every Air Jordan since the Kitchen wasfounded in 2001.
Rumor has it that tens of millions of dollars have been spent onthe Kitchen since its inception. A number of people inside thecompany still ask why it exists. "What are you guys doing, man?Where's the stuff?" says the Kitchen's VP of special projects,Tinker Hatfield, recounting the challenges he still getsoccasionally from Nike business-unit directors who question (oreven resent) the Kitchen's freedom from the normal quarterlybusiness cycle.
In fact, the Kitchen was first created to counter the negativeeffects of Nike's enormous growth. After the company stumbled inthe late 1990s, it was divided into six discrete business units(basketball, women's fitness, running, and so forth), eachresponsible for its own profit and loss. "A natural casualty of[dividing up the company] is fewer resources going to new productdesign," Hatfield says, "because one of the easy ways in the shortterm to make your division's numbers look good is to cut back oninnovation." The Kitchen was created as an antidote to fiscalprudence run amok.
"You have to remember, we're very strategically shot into an orbitaround planet Nike," Hatfield adds, "but not too far out. In theend, innovation is not helpful unless there's a way to tie it to apowerful company that helps drive it somewhere."
Right now, that somewhere is Beijing, where athletes will be flying citius , altius , fortius in defiance of the Universal Law of Sports Technology. Their"faster, higher, stronger" ethos may stir our souls -- we mortalsthrill to their victories and agonize at their defeats -- but theunromantic truth is that the guys who made all this cool stuffmoved on a while ago.
"I don't sit there biting my fingernails when I watch somebodycompete at the Olympics," Hatfield says. "I hope they do well, butwe're working four or five years out, especially for these reallymeaningful performance innovations."
He pauses for a moment, a wry smile playing across his face."There's a certain amount of swashbuckling that goes on in thisprocess," he confesses. "You have to be a bit of a cold-bloodedkiller."