Roughly 48 hours after British athlete Keely Hodgkinson secured her first Olympic victory, in the women’s 800m final at Paris 2024, Nike was already celebrating in full bloom at its London flagship store, Nike Town, on buzzy Oxford Street. I witnessed it firsthand: a glass vitrine paraded a replica of Hodgkinson’s winning sneaker (signed by herself), complete with the time stamp of her gold-worthy race and an aerial shot of the finish line – let’s not forget the sprawling red and black LED screen column reminding us that ‘all-time greats don’t stop at gold’.
Are we even surprised? Of course not. Nike is both the master and student when it comes to its unrelenting encouragement to ‘Just do it’. Over the past 50 years, the sportswear giant’s evolutionary and revolutionary creative telescope rests in a simple truth: ‘to invite everybody – and every body – to experience sport for themselves’. For the grassroots startup turned global phenomenon (valued at just under 30 billion USD as of 2024), if you have a body, then you’re an athlete, and it’s via an unwavering commitment to design that the brand embraces the endless pursuit of athletic betterment in all its forms; no garment or sneaker comes out from pure instinct.
