New look for Team Kenya in Paris Games as Nike drops "unique" design

Athletic footwear and apparel corporation Nike, on Thursday, unveiled an array of products for track and field teams that will feature in the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris this summer.

Among the nations the organization will outfit in the global games include: Kenya, U.S.A, Canada, Germany, China and Uganda.

Several athletes including Kenya’s duo of Faith Kipyegon and Eliud Kipchoge were present at the unveiling ceremony, where they paraded the new-look uniforms - unique to each sport and country.

Kenyan design

In what presented itself as yet another shift in Kenya’s Olympic wear, out goes the 2020 “Honeycombs” and in comes the new “swirl of color.”

In images posted online, Kenya’s kit consists of a predominantly red vest, but this time with a chest overlay of green - precisely lime green - that is coupled up with a dotted pattern.

And while the men’s shorts remain all black, the women’s version is one of red and black stripes, a unique design that goes along a separate women’s vest of all red.

“Moment of apparel”

Janet Nichol, vice president of apparel innovation at Nike, in an interview with CBS Sports, believes the 2024 Paris Olympics will serve as a “moment of apparel” and a game-changer for the company.

“On the apparel side, why it's a game-changer for us, is because we've now been able to take athlete insights, along with data and use that algorithm to create something that allows us to get to a level of specificity, fidelity and accuracy that we've never been able to do before," she said.

In a bid to design the most precise uniforms, Nike brought athletes in to go through testing and data collection.

"What we learn from our best athletes — it's 10% of the athletes we work with — there is a trickle-down innovation because we're really intent and focused on making sure that our innovations work across body shapes, across... if we're talking running, running speeds, running styles, body shapes and styles," said Matt Nurse of the Nike Sport Innovation Lab.

In the designs dubbed by athletes as “party print” the new design - spread across basketball, track and field, soccer and skateboarding - the kits have been engineered to have a digitally captured design that represents a runner's body in motion, creating a swirl of color specific to each country's uniform.

The company has also focused on creating uniforms that are unique to each sport and country. For track and field, Nike created specific kits only for athletes that make it to the final events, something the company has never done before.

'Team Kenya merchandise to hit shop next month' - NOCK

In addition to the unveiling of the Olympic kits, the company also celebrated the history of Air technology at the Nike Air Immersion space.

The space was designed to show the initial creation of the cushioning system that was introduced in the 1978 Nike Tailwind shoe, and all the way to the future of one of the most well-known features to exist within the company.

Fan furore

And whilst Nike has taken pride in the design, the same cannot be said of Kenyans online, who pushed back the look of the new kit, most of them calling it a miss, while other calling it out for its color shade.

"The men's kit should have retained a touch of the flag," X user Ramesh Saxena said under Citius Mag's kit reveal. "Why these colors."

Flo_Trap said: "Some horrendous font. The women's top is just plain red. That was just lazy. And what is that yellow splatter? Somebody needs to be removed from their job."

Kenyan sprinter Mark Kangethe said: "Why would the Kenyan kit have yellow? The ladies top kit shows zero effort honestly. Big joke."

The overriding takeaway at least from the early reaction is that a better job - in terms of the appeal - ought to have been done, but color enthusiasts will stress - as seen in Faith Kipyegon's pose - that the "yellow" is a shade of green, and that there remains more Kenyan designs / ranges (for other disciplines) to be unveiled by the end of April.