Inside the Nike Victory 2 FK, the Custom Spike Made for Faith Kipyegon’s Breaking4 Moonshot

Goddess Mode Unlocked

Necessity is the mother of invention, so when the goddess of victory demands the best technology on the planet to break the women’s 4-minute mile barrier, you better get to innovating. And with Faith Kipyegon’s moonshot attempt quickly approaching, she’ll need all the help she can get if she’s trying to break her own world record (plus 8 seconds) on June 26 at the Stade Charléty in Paris.

The good news is that when you have all the weight of the Nike brand behind you, you already have a head start. From head to toe, Nike is diving into all the details and dialing in the form, fit, and function of Kipyegon’s race day kit.

Let’s take a look at what she’ll be wearing on her feet come race day.

Inside the Nike Victory 2 FK

When Kipyegon set the women’s world record for the mile in 2023, she was wearing the Nike Victory 2, a distance spike featuring a Nike Zoom Air unit, carbon fiber Flyplate, and TPU sole plate. But if we’re going under four, we’ll need to do better. 

Nike is doing just that, taking the design of the Victory 2 and tweaking every part of it, building a customized shoe from scratch. Over the development cycle, they flew to Kenya to observe and react in real-time to Kipyegon’s preferences, creating customized prototypes on the fly. Round after round of footwear, all leading to this moment. The end result is a one-off, bespoke slipper for Cinderella to wear to her own ball. 

Starting with the upper, the Atomknit of the previous version has been replaced with a fully customized Flyknit, an engineered mesh made of super lightweight yarn in a net-like structure, far lighter than anything Nike has ever used before. It’s so light that it actually shaved off 60% of the weight of the standard upper on the Victory 2, a savings of 25 grams (.75 ounces). From feedback given by Kipyegon in proto testing, Nike widened the fit in the forefoot as well.

Moving down to the internal components, a lightweight and cushioned sock liner sits on top of a full-length carbon fiber Flyplate with unidirectional flex. The heel segment of the midsole still relies on the tried and true ZoomX, Nike’s proprietary PEBA foam that continues to be the gold standard in racing, eight years after its debut in the Vaporfly 4%.

The forefoot of the Victory 2 FK is where things start to get interesting. Instead of sticking with the traditional Zoom Air unit, Nike opted for a taller version with a customized shape, creating a bigger bubble to harness the energy coming from the compression-and-release reaction from the tensile fibers embedded within. Nike’s research team found that a taller Zoom Air unit would help improve efficiency across greater distances. Despite the taller unit, the heel to toe drop is actually higher in the Victory 2 FK.

Underneath all that is a carbon fiber soleplate running from the midfoot to the forefoot of the spike, an upgrade from the TPU plate used in the Victory 2. (Track spikes are the one exception for additional footwear plates in the World Athletics shoe rules, allowing for a second plate to be used as long as it’s used as an attachment point for the actual spikes.) One plate will depict an image of Nike, the goddess of victory, while the other will read “Fastest Known,” a double entendre of the FK within the spike name.

Speaking of actual spikes, the Victory 2 FK uses six, 3D printed titanium pins for traction, as opposed to the four pins found in the traditional Victory 2. Typically, spikes use steel or aluminum; by using titanium, the Victory 2 FK is both stronger and lighter than both those materials. These pins are embedded into the soleplate, cutting down on hardware weight from the threaded holes found in the standard version of the Victory 2.

Now, in traditional competition, this shoe would be banned. Not because it breaks any explicit rules within the World Athletics rulebook, but because it’s a bespoke shoe, which aren’t allowed in competition (though there are certainly ways around that; looking at you, development shoes).

There’s currently no word on whether a version of this shoe will be made available to the public, but Nike has explicitly stated that they hope to see some of these technologies and innovations trickling down into future footwear.

As far as weight, there isn’t anything official, but we can guarantee you this: if the standard version is 4.8 ounces, we can guarantee that this one is lighter. And that’s about as light as you can get.

As Nike stated in its press materials, the most important component in Breaking 4 “isn’t futuristic apparel or a cutting-edge spike, but Kipyegon herself.” We’ve already covered how chopping off 8 seconds from an already incredible world record will be a monumental challenge, and how Nike needs to throw the entire weight of the swoosh behind this project.

It appears they’re doing their part, so let’s see if the stars align in just under two weeks.