Nike Reveals Tech For Faith Kipyegon’s Breaking4 Effort

Three-time Olympic champion Faith Kipyegon has a singular focus with her new Nike-backed goal: Be the first woman to break the four-minute barrier in the mile run. Nike’s research and development team is hoping to make that happen.

The attempt comes June 26 at Stade Charléty in Paris, with every element of aerodynamics, apparel, footwear technology and race conditions designed to help the Kenyan shave at least 7.65 seconds off her 2023 world record time of 4:07.64.

“We had to learn specifically what requirements were needed for the four-minute mile and the requirements for Faith to achieve it,” Brett Kirby, principal scientist of applied performance innovation at Nike, tells me. “This is the recipe we have today.”

That recipe includes entirely customized footwear—the Nike Victory Elite FK—and apparel for Kipyegon in the carefully selected Paris location.

While Kipyegon set the world record in her Nike Air Victory 2 spike, Carrie Dimoff, Nike’s footwear innovation lead on the project, tells me they wanted to work one-to-one to create a personalized spike for a specific athlete and distance. Building from scratch—and not for a larger audience—allowed the team to bring in an ultra-lightweight yarn for the upper, a lighter carbon fiber outsole plate with six 3D-printed titanium pins and a fresh approach to underfoot energy return.

Dimoff says the biggest opportunity—along with minimizing weight by using the most premium of materials—was maximizing energy return. That’s why the forefoot Zoom Air unit is three millimeters taller than on the Victory 2 spike. “We are able to return over 90% of energy and force back to her,” Dimoff says about the air unit. “We were able to apply a lot of creativity.”

The footwear process started by examining a wealth of materials and ideas from other shoes. Kipyegon first tested concepts at the Nike research lab in Oregon and the team then sent her home with prototypes. Using laboratory testing and field testing with Kipyegon in Kenya, the team settled on a spike that increases energy return and reduces weight, often tweaking protypes while working with her. “We were trying to be very open and flexible,” Dimoff says. “It was a combination of what we could measure in our lab as well as what she felt more comfortable in.”

The carbon fiber pairs with the Zoom Air and Zoom X foam.

“For this attempt, we were really focused on Faith,” Dimoff says, “what works best for her loads, her forces, the shape of her foot, the distance she is running.”

That doesn’t mean the learnings won’t extend to the retail world at some point. “After finishing optimizing for her, there is a great opportunity to step back and see what this can do for other athletes, other distances,” Dimoff says. “Moments like this can be a great catalyst for athletes all over the track.”

The Breaking2 project that started in 2016 bred a new system of performance footwear that has led the direction of the entire industry.

The Breaking4 effort isn’t just footwear, though. “It is a wholistic balance of everything,” Lisa Gibson, Nike’s apparel innovation lead, tells me, adding that the team had to balance every element of performance with comfort.

The biggest technological insight on Kipyegon’s apparel is the use of aeronodes on the suit. The “proprietary slick and stretchy material” arm and leg sleeves and head band are unique, but Nike believes they created “a little bit of magic with aeronodes” added to the suit to create a controlled turbulence.

Located in specific areas of the body where engineers wanted the air to flow as smoothly and close to the body as possible to prevent drag, the nodes create small eddies of air. “We are trying to make sure the air and wind are flowing as smoothly around Faith as possible,” Gibson says.

The half spheres vary in size, all tuned to computerized and wind tunnel testing.

In an additional first for the brand, the FlyWeb Bra features 3D-printed TPU meant to be lightweight and breathable while helping manage temperature and moisture.

Kirby, who says he felt like a performance architect when working on the project, says that no one piece could be done apart from another. “You set the problem at the center and then start to build those puzzle pieces,” he says. “They have to come together toward the centralized objective.”

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