Feeding the need for speed the company has harnessed the aerodynamics of golf balls and applied the dimpled design to an all-body suit for Olympic sprinters.
The result? Shave 0.023 of a second off the clock - the difference between gold and going home to work in a car wash.
Why a golf ball design? Because PGA tournaments of 4 days, 72 holes, 288 strokes and 28,000 yards are most often decided by a single shot. So that little ball needs to fly, baby.
And so do high-speed human runners. Its all about wind resistance, all other muscles being equal.
Nike is shaving ounces off the shoes too. Now we just gotta get them to shave their heads. Oh yea, and shouldn't those shoes be blue instead of urine-yellow-green?
The concept of making athletes more 'slippery' is not new. Skiers and swimmers have benefited in the last 15 years from similar ideas. Track, skiing, swimming all share the same thousandths of a second difference between a winner and a loser, despite the years of dedicated work required to make a world-class competitor.
Nike began it's rise as a company when a track coach, Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon made a couple of pairs of light-weight distance running shoes on a waffle iron for Steve Prefontaine. Nike is all about wind and weight, man.
