On paper, Nike’s Breaking4 was a failure – but that misses the bigger picture | Canada Voices

Nike called it a “moonshot” – and told us to have faith.

On a calm and sunny Thursday night in Paris, a few thousand spectators packed into Stade Charléty, drawn by a singular, almost mythic pursuit: to see a woman run a sub-four-minute mile. Posters bearing her image peppered the stadium, and Nike banners fluttered in the warm breeze. At the centre of it all was Faith Kipyegon – Kenya’s middle-distance marvel, three-time Olympic champion, and already the fastest female miler in history.

Clad in an all-black speedsuit, she ran onto the track with quiet poise, leading a warm-up stride alongside 13 pacemakers – 11 men and two women – under the clear Parisian sky. This was Nike’s Breaking4, a bold, made-for-streaming spectacle with an ambitious goal: to propel Kipyegon to a time nearly eight seconds faster than her own world record.

I, a total running nerd, stood six rows from the finish line, just mesmerized enough to momentarily ignore the elephant in the room: her task felt completely impossible.

Remove Kipyegon’s world record of 4:07.64 from the equation; and the fastest mile ever run by a woman was still 4:12.33 – and at that level of running, 12 seconds might as well be a lifetime.

Nike’s internal research team even estimated in a paper published in April that the world would probably have to wait ten more years (or as many as 35) before seeing a woman run a sub-four-minute mile.

And still, they tried to make it happen on Thursday, using a new suite of technological tools to bridge the gap. Nike developed a full-body speed suit with calf and arm sleeves to minimize wind drag, developed ultra-light track spikes customized for Kipyegon’s foot strike, and a breathable, 3D-printed sports bra to maximize cooling. They also tapped a baker’s dozen of their sponsored athletes to pace the event, including Olympic medalists Georgia Bell and Grant Fisher, and trained them to swarm Kipyegon in an optimal, wind-blocking formation.

These tweaks made the record attempt illegal in the eyes of World Athletics, the global governing body of track and field, but it gave her a fighting chance. Specifically, Nike’s research team believed these modifications could carry her to a time of 3:59.37.

And for exactly three minutes, I thought she was going to do it. Kipyegon, shrouded by her Olympic pacing team, started the race at a promising speed. She ran the first lap in 1:00.40, crossed the midway point in 2:00.75, and reached 1,200m in 3:01.84. Running a final lap well under 60 seconds, like she did while setting her mile world record, would have been more than sufficient. But right then, the wheels fell off. She struggled in the final quarter; immediately throwing herself on the track after crossing the finish in 4:06.42 – 1.22 seconds faster than her current world record, but eons away from the ultimate goal.

Fans still erupted in “Faith, Faith, Faith” chants. Rightfully so. She stayed on pace as long as she physically could, delivered a stunning show in the process, and still ran the fastest mile in history. Her star grew that night.

But then came the hangover, and the sober second thought: she missed. And Nike missed. By a lot.

At the press conference it started to sound like running 3:59 was an incredibly tall order.

Patrick Sang, Kipyegon’s coach, said he was stressed before the race that he couldn’t stop pacing around.

“This was my first trial,” said Kipyegon, dispelling rumours that she had already tested the technology in secret. “I have to go back to the drawing board.”

It’s an unpleasant post-mortem for Nike. Was their new tech not as revolutionary as they thought? Did they spend an incalculable amount of money on R&D, stadium bookings, appearance fees for Kipyegon and her professional Nike pacers, and flights to Paris for a non-trivial number of influencers for nothing?

Meanwhile, my initial question: why did Nike set up such an event if they were never sure she would do it?

Because Kipyegon’s result, in the end, was only part of the exercise. By other measures, Breaking4 was a slam dunk.

It was a race for our era, now that we mostly consume sports ephemerally. Nobody online seemed to care that it wasn’t record eligible, and many onlookers didn’t even grasp the absurdity of chopping eight seconds off the best time in history. But the spectacle lit up Instagram and made for nice TikToks. Ultimately, if only for one day, it made new people care about running and track.

It was also a sport science statement. It took Nike 18-months to prepare for Breaking4. They threw the kitchen sink at women-specific sport science, when the rest of the world struggles to do the same. By and large, our understanding of female physiology lags what we know of men, and much of it is due to sport performance research being done predominantly on men, and then retrofitted to women.

It’s easy to be cynical about the attempt as a whole. Some may wonder if Nike held Breaking4 a few hours before reporting their Q4 earnings on purpose; and tried to leverage it to amend a difficult year in the boardroom that included a rocky CEO change and market share lost to competitors, HOKA and Brooks, mainly. Others may lament the end result on the track.

But doing so misses the bigger picture. Breaking4 pioneered sport performance research around women athletes at a level of specificity that’s rarely done, and proved the cultural value of off-the-beaten-path events. I cannot speak to the money it costed, but I don’t expect the outcome to deter Nike – or another company – from one day trying again.

And when that day comes, it may once again be Kipyegon at the centre of it. She doesn’t seem too fazed. Hours after the race, she announced that she will aim to break her own 1,500m world record next week in Oregon – sans special gear, this time.

“I want to show the world what’s possible,” she said at the press conference, “it’s only a matter of time.”