Nike ACG Officially Unveils the All Conditions Racing Department

A Radical Reinvention

In what is probably the least kept secret within trail running, Nike ACG (presumably the successor to Nike Trail) has officially given a name to its cadre of elite trail runners: the All Conditions Racing Department.

Drawing on the heritage of the ACG name, Nike is pinning the future of the brand on nearly two dozen athletes spread across the globe. According to Nike, this is an “elite roster of athletes, unrestrained and unrestricted, who are dedicated to high-speed pursuits and want to outrun everything and everyone.”

Their recent track record shows they may be right. Caleb Olson has been absolutely raking over the past year, with wins at both Transgrancanaria and the hallowed Western States Endurance Run where he came within two minutes of breaking the course record. In that race, he sported the future of Nike’s apparel innovation, with a cropped long sleeve that looked like it got into a losing game of Russian Roulette with an industrial hole punch. That technology now has a name– Radical AirFlow. Tested by the team of the All Conditions Racing Department, Olson’s top featured funnel-like venting with strategic airflow placements, as well as customizations like shorter sleeves for watch access and a cropped bottom hem for waist pack movement.

On Olson’s feet was the Nike ACG Ultrafly (again, not the Ultrafly Trail, as the first version of the shoe was named), a trail-tuned super shoe that has seen over 13 rounds of testing (most shoes see three rounds of prototyping). Over the course of those rounds, Nike athletes have racked up more than 30,000 miles in the shoe. More info on that shoe is coming next week.

Joining Olson is a slew of runners on both the men’s and women’s side of the sport. From Riley Brady (winner of Black Canyons 100K and Javelina Jundred) to Tyler Green (4-time top-10 finisher at Western States) to top trail athletes in China, UK, Spain, and Italy, the Nike trail team is stacked, with a guaranteed representation at all the big races on the world stage.

The focus of the All Conditions Racing Department will be to take these athletes and outfit them in the most technologically advanced gear coming out of the Nike Sports Research lab. Whether that’s footwear or apparel, the goal of Nike ACG is “life unleashed in the wild,” according to Scott LeClair, VP/GM of Nike ACG.

Our Thoughts on Nike ACG

Nike already had most of these athletes in the bullpen waiting to pitch a perfect game– so why the announcement? 

It seems that Nike is making up for the past half decade of ho-hum commitment to sport and a barely-there approach on the trails. It all started last summer with the “Winning is Everything” campaign and rolled through the fall when longtime legend Elliott Hill took back control as CEO. Brands like Adidas Terrex, Hoka, and On (on the road side) started taking bigger and bigger chunks away from their revenue, with an array of upstarts taking smaller bites (i.e. you wouldn’t believe how many Speedland shoes I saw out at Leadville this past weekend). With ACG taking over Nike trail, it’s obvious that Nike is back with a vengeance, drawing buckets from the deep well of their history in the sport.

The turnaround has been swift, the focus is back, and leaning into the heritage of the much-loved ACG sub label is a brilliant move that we’re all on board with. 

Nevertheless, there’s still some confusion. Nike has been cagey on the clarification of whether Nike Trail has been officially transitioned to Nike ACG. Why? I’m not sure, because Nike ACG has always had an identity problem, especially over the past two decades. We just want to know what it stands for. Is it performance or is it lifestyle? It’s certainly cool, and has been since the days of the Air Mowabb. It certainly has a sticky factor to it, because it’s still around. But what is it now? Even Nike’s own page on ACG is confusing as hell, with a nebulous definition of the label. I’m actually less informed after reading it.

I suspect it’s a slow rollout, so hopefully we’ll see some more clarification in the coming months.

Either way, we’re excited about it. We’ve always had a soft spot in our hearts for ACG– it oozes cool, and the way that Nike is leaning into its pure ‘90s vibes… well, as ‘90s kids we’re not sure we could ask for anything else.

Maybe an Asian pear wrapper long sleeve top for our next trail race. And a pair of Air Mowabb, just because.