Nike renamed the Nike Trail Team to the 22-member All Conditions Racing Department, indicating a shift to fold trail running products into the All Conditions Gear (ACG) sub-brand. ACG hosted Nike's true trail offerings in the 1990s but more recently leaned into fashion and gorpcore. The rebrand could add technical credibility to ACG while risking erosion of the Nike Trail brand's decade-long goodwill; that risk is tempered by elite athlete results like Caleb Olson's Western States 100 win and by advanced apparel showcased at races. Nike will release Radical AirFlow apparel featuring hydrophilic knit, funnel-shaped airducts, and skin-side dimples to boost evaporative cooling and comfort.
Hinted at on the ground during the 2025 Western States 100 but now official in the lead-up to this week's UTMB, the Nike Trail Team is now called the 22-member All Conditions Racing Department. More broadly, it signals what appears to be Nike's trail running products merging into the brand's existing All Conditions Gear (ACG) sub-brand. If we recall correctly, while ACG included Nike's true trail offerings back in the 1990s, in more recent years, ACG has appeared to be a fashion-first label in the "gorpcore" world.
Perhaps this move is a play to bring more bona fides to ACG's products, although that risks losing some of the legitimacy and goodwill the Nike Trail brand has built over the past decade. Of course, that potential loss is hedged by top athlete performances like Caleb Olson's blazing fast win of this year's Western States 100 and high-tech products like Olson's and teammates' airy apparel at that race.
According to Nike, the Radical AirFlow apparel material is "an engineered knit with hydrophilic chemistry to help manage moisture and enhance the sensation of airflow." Furthermore, funnel-shaped "airducts accelerate airflow from the front of the material towards the skin." Perhaps most interestingly, research led to the company placing dimples on the skin side of the garment in conjunction with the airducts after finding that this improved the duration of air circulation at the skin level, thereby increasing evaporative cooling and comfort
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