Paris 2024 all done and dusted. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the last couple of weeks, especially the track that finished with the women’s marathon on Sunday. Both marathons really enjoyable due to the nature of the course and the inclusion of a 2 climbs, one utterly bonkers.
One thing I did pay closer attention to was the footwear athletes where choosing to run in. I can’t help but find my eye drawn to feet when watching runners. Over the course of the weeks racing I begun to wonder who was having the most success, relative to their presence. So with this in mind I embarked on a project to understand what was going on.
As I pondered on this I wanted to compare the amount of athletes wearing a brand, with the amount of medals won. Equally I wanted some way to then understand how successful / prestigious a brand was on the basis of where the athletes where coming. 8th to 4th in a final are all slightly different, as 3rd is to 1st. So with that in mind I devised a scoring system to grade each brand on.
What follows is what I found. I reviewed every race and noted down the footwear each athlete was wearing. Only one athlete evaded me – Martin Kiprotich from Uganda, even going back to watching old 2023/24 World XC videos wasn’t helpful. So he was removed (a low scoring 10,000m runner so not critical).
I listed each brand worn, and then worked out the % of runners wearing that brand in a race.
To then work out a success rate I gave each position a score – as coming 1st is far more prestigious than 8th in a final, but to not score 8th felt wrong as it was still presence in an Olympic final. So for all the events with 8 competitors scores as follows:
1 – 100
2 – 50
3 – 25
4 – 5
5 – 4
6 – 3
7 – 2
8 – 1
TOT – 190 points each race
I then worked out an expected score for each brand, based on the % of entrants. So 4 finalists, gave an expected prestige score of 50% of 190 or 95 points. An example here would be the 100m race:
You could argue Adidas had a better race, due to gold helping them outperform what would have been expected, even though Nike won 2 medals off 50% of the entrants.
With this in place I then reviewed every race.
Looking at each area, sprints first:
Some notes – Both mens / womens 100m final had the same 3 brands. Nike, Adidas, Puma.
Womens 100m, Nike had 6 of the 8 finalists
Women’s Nike underperformed – less medals (40%) than % of finalists (45%) and a lower expected score. Mens Nike as expected.
New Balance massively over performed. 4 finalists, 4 medalists, 2 of which were gold
Both mens and womens have a spread of medalists.
Overall – Nike under-performed, Adidas underperformed in terms of medals won vs finalists, but made up for this with the quality of medals won.
Puma performed pretty much as their finalists would expect.
Asics and On get some exposure at the top level.
Mid-Distance:
Comments – on the women’s side Nike were massively dominant. They won 14 of 15 medals, out performing their finalists (57%) and their expected score. The only non Nike shoe to medal was an Asics shoe, in the women’s 10000m (Batocletti).
The 800m women’s 7/8 women wearing Nike.
1500m 8/12 wearing Nike.
Steeple chase top 6 women wearing Nike.
Looking at the combined scores, Nike really do overwhelm the mid-distance arena.
The mens was more competitive, but still saw Nike do exceptionally well (. Adidas nearly matched medals to finalists, but fell down on the colour of those medals, losing out on their prestige count.
On men do a lot better than the On women (courtesy of 1 medal, Nuguese in the 1500m)
Both together:
So Nike had 48% of all the finalists, won 60% of all the medals with and outperformed their expected results score.
Adidas – 24% of finalists, 20% of medals, slightly less than their expected score, Mid-D bringing them down
On – Nice to see a relatively new brand medal (as stated, Nuguese in the 1500m) & made big strides as 3rd biggest finalists, showing aggressive moves in the world of athletics
Puma – pretty much finalists to medals to expected score, so whilst disappointing in some regards with marque sprint events, overall not too bad an Olympics.
New Balance – Prestige from the excellent women’s sprinters.
Asics – finalists match medalists, just not quite at the prestige level that New Balance managed.
Hoka & Under Armour, new players so making finals for them a success I imagine
Brooks – show what 1 great athlete can do to exceeding what is expected from a presence point of view whilst matching finalists to medals. As a well established shoe brand I wonder how concerned they are around Olympic exposure.
So if you are in charge of women’s Nike Mid-Distance rep, great performance. Sprints – really must do better on the women’s side. A curious mix there and overall lots of questions about how the brands move forwards. Which brands push into Mid-Distance for the next few years. Do sprints get attacked more by Brooks & New balance on the men’s side? Where does their investment go?
BreatheToMove 