Nike Defends New Olympic Track Uniform As It Causes Trouble on Social Media

Nike athletes gave a first look at the 2024 national and federation kits at Nike On Air, an immersive experience in Paris. (Photo: Nike)

Nike has been causing a commotion on social media after the company unveiled its new U.S. track and field team uniform for the 2024 Paris Olympics at an event Thursday in Paris. Concerns were brought up after the image of the designs was posted last week by Citius Magazine on its social platforms, which shows a women's unitard featuring a high-cut bikini line.

An image of one of Nike’s American track and field uniforms, modeled on mannequins, set off a bunch of online criticism . The image, shown as part of the uniform reveal, showed a female bodysuit with a high-cut hip that critics derided as sexist.

The post led to thousands of comments including some from former U.S. athletes. The backlash comes less than two months after Nike came under fire over its new uniforms for Major League Baseball players, which some say the uniforms quality looks poor.

But this time the company's designs were caught in a social media buzz over sexism in women's sports attire.

Nike officials noted that athletes are consulted throughout the entire creation of the uniforms. “Working directly with athletes throughout every stage of the design process. Nike designed garments to ensure fit across a range of body types and style preferences and infused real-time feedback throughout the entire product-development cycle,” John Hoke, Nike Chief Innovation Officer, said in a statement.

On social media, some fans asked if the mannequin's outfit was for swimming events. While others expressed concerns that the outfits will sexualize women's sports with the uniforms' lack of coverage. Even with all of the backlash, some athletes have defended the uniforms like runner Sinclaire Johnson who said, “Lolol these comments have me 💀 but, Nike included a number of us in the kit testing process and I can assure you the bottoms don’t look like this on a real human.”  

“I absolutely love people defending women, but we have at least 20 different combinations of a uniform to compete in with all the tops and bottoms available to us. We DO have the men’s option available to us if we want it,” continued Moon. 

She also went on to say that she doesn't mind wearing less fabric and having more skin exposed. Nike also plans to provide custom tailoring at the games.