The buildings at Nike’s world headquarters — the Philip H. Knight Campus in Beaverton, Ore. — are named after the likes of Serena Williams, Jerry Rice and Mia Hamm. But the company doesn’t recognize only sports superstars as athletes.

“If you have a body, you’re an athlete,” said Mike Yonker, who heads up the team developing Project Amplify — Nike’s new bionic sneaker.

Accordingly, the Project Amplify footwear system is aimed at a broad audience. “Amplify is designed for that everyday athlete to give them the energy they need to go further, to go faster, with greater levels of confidence,” said Yonker. “It’s like an e-bike for your feet.”

Even as some elite athletes are strapping skis and skates to their feet in an effort to move ever faster at this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy, Nike and other companies in the footwear and mobility sectors are on a quest to help humans move farther and faster in everyday life — using digital technology.

Nike said it plans to launch Project Amplify commercially in 2028. The system, tested in prototype form by NPR at the company’s headquarters, consists of fairly standard-looking sneakers with a carbon fiber plate running through the soles. These sneakers are attached at the back to close-fitting, 3D-printed titanium leg shells that cinch to the calves. The battery-powered contraptions, containing complex motors, sensors and circuitry, weigh a couple of pounds and look like something out of Terminator or RoboCop.

Nike’s Project Amplify prototypes are displayed from earliest to latest at the Nike Sport Research Lab in Beaverton, Ore., on Jan. 13.

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The latest iteration of Nike’s Project Amplify at the Nike Sport Research Lab.

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“What it’s doing is learning how your ankles are moving, how long your steps are, taking the algorithms and customizing them for you,” said Alison Sheets-Singer, Project Amplify’s lead scientist. “So that when it turns on, it feels natural and smooth.”

A phone app powers the footwear system on and off and can be used to toggle between various speed settings in “walk” and “run” mode. When activated, the leg shells pick up the heels and propel the feet purposefully forward.

A long quest for speed

Human beings have an innate desire to move faster on foot, whether for practical reasons or thrills and pleasure, said Elizabeth Semmelhack, director and senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.

“The Nike Amplify comes from this long legacy of trying to increase speed and use science to help us get there,” Semmelhack said.

Semmelhack points to ice skates made of bone from the 1600s, 19th-century in-line roller skates and an iconoclastic pair of crescent-shaped, metal rocking-shoes patented in the early 20th century.

A 1600s bone skate, 19th-century in-line roller skates and a drawing of a patent for metal rocking-shoes from the early 20th century.

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Athletic-shoe manufacturers initially worked to increase the wearer’s speed in the 1970s by using lighter materials — switching out rubber and leather for nylon and foam. Electronics started appearing in sneakers in the 1980s. The Adidas Micropacer and Puma RS-Computer shoe used sensors to track a runner’s distance. Nike even came out with self-lacing high-tops a decade ago — the Nike Air Mag. The limited-edition product brought to life the futuristic sneakers featured in the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II.

But none of these innovations used digital technology to increase velocity, because of power constraints. “The energy needed to propel a human being forward is so significant that we do not have an energy source yet that is small enough that can be placed within a shoe,” Semmelhack said.

That’s why Nike and others working on electronic-assisted running and walking systems today, such as the Massachusetts-based startup Dephy — which collaborated with Nike on Project Amplify and also recently launched its own similar product, Sidekick — include ergonomic leg shells to power their products. Some of these systems avoid shoes entirely; for instance, the Ascentiz H+K takes the form of a motorized knee and hip exoskeleton. (According to Nike, Project Amplify is designed to have enough battery life, roughly, to enable the wearer to complete a 10-kilometer run. The batteries are rechargeable and can be switched out for a fresh set if the wearer wants to go for longer.)

Expanding mobility horizons

Despite the power challenges, the electronic-powered, motorized footwear space is a busy one. More than a dozen startups were exhibiting their innovations in the “bionic, footwear, exoskeleton” category at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, one of the world’s most prominent annual showcases for tech innovation. Many of these products are focused on helping people solve mobility issues, rather than necessarily aiding those who already walk and run with ease to do so faster.

“We’ve described a phenomenon called ‘personal range anxiety,’ where people are now making decisions about which activities they opt in and out of based on asking themselves, ‘Will I be comfortable? Will I be in pain? Will I be able to keep up with my friends and family?’” said Dephy co-founder and CEO Luke Mooney. “And so we’re helping them restore that confidence.”

Chloe Veltman walks outside wearing the Nike Amplify system at the Nike campus in Beaverton, Oregon.

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Some experts see a future where these footwear systems make a similar impact on walking and running as electronic bikes have made in recent years on mountain biking.

“E-bikes have changed the landscape of mountain biking for people that maybe didn’t have the ability or were getting older and still wanted to participate,” said Mark Oleson, a former Adidas executive who has worked on many innovation projects in the athletic shoe sector and who currently heads up the women’s volleyball footwear and apparel company Avoli. “There’s a huge opportunity where companies are asking, ‘How do we get someone into a sport or into a recreational activity that they normally wouldn’t have the ability to do?’”

Epstein Files
Videos Of Nearly Naked Women Unearthed …
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Published
February 10, 2026
1:00 AM PST

Want more Olympics updates? Subscribe here to get our newsletter, Rachel Goes to the Games, delivered to your inbox for a behind-the-scenes look at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

MILAN — Ilia Malinin’s skyward jumps have earned him the nickname the “Quad God,” but it’s his backflip that everyone seems to be talking about.

The U.S. figure skater performed the move in his first two programs on Olympic ice, landing the latter on a single blade and sending the arena into a frenzy.

“It’s honestly such an incredible roar-feeling in the environment — once I do that backflip everyone is like screaming for joy and they’re just out of control,” Malinin said. “The backflip is something that I’m sure a lot of people know the basics of … so I think just having that really can bring in the non-figure skating crowd as well.”

Malinin, who trained in gymnastics when he was younger, first debuted his backflip in competition in 2024 — the year the sport’s governing body lifted its ban on the move.

His moves in Milan aren’t just awe-inspiring, but historic: Malinin is the first person to legally land a backflip at the Olympics in five decades.

It was controversial from the start 

Terry Kubicka, also an American, became the first skater to land a backflip in international competition at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics.

“There was a lot of controversy leading up to the Olympics, because I did it for the first time a month before at the U.S. Championships,” Kubicka told U.S. Figure Skating decades later. “At the time, there was no ruling on as how it would be [scored] and the feedback that I got was that judges did not really see it as a pro or con because they didn’t know how to judge it.”

The International Skating Union, the sport’s governing body, banned the backflip the following year, in part because of the level of danger and in part because it violated the principle of jumps landing on one skate.

But the backflip didn’t totally disappear. Some elite skaters — including 1984 gold medalist Scott Hamilton — continued landing the move in non-competitive settings, like exhibition shows.

And one skater even dared to bring a banned backflip on to Olympic ice.

Surya Bonaly of France performed an illegal backflip at the 1998 Olympics, figuring if she wasn’t going to medal she could at least make history.

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France’s Surya Bonaly landed a backflip on one blade at the 1998 Nagano Games, even while injured, in what is widely considered a brave act of defiance.

She knew she couldn’t get the scores she needed to win, but was determined to make her mark on history anyway. It did cost her points but it also cemented her trailblazing legacy, especially as a Black athlete in sport with a relative lack of diversity.

“I appreciate more and I feel more proud of myself now, today, than years ago for when I did it,” Bonaly said in 2020.

The backflip comes back 

In recent years, a handful of skaters — including U.S. defending Olympic champion Nathan Chen — have backflipped at exhibition galas, much to viewers’ delight.

France’s Adam Siao Him Fa pictured in October 2025, once the backflip was legal. He performed it in competition the year before, when it was not.

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The move reached an even bigger crowd at European Championships in 2024, when French skater Adam Siao Him Fa landed one in his free skate program, enjoying such a comfortable lead that the deduction wouldn’t matter. He did it again at the World Championships the same year, and still walked away with a bronze medal.

In a full-circle twist, Kubicka — the first to land an Olympic backflip — was a member of the technical panel that watched Siao Him Fa do it at worlds, and gave him the requisite two-point deduction, almost exactly 50 years later.

Later that year, the International Skating Union officially reversed its backflip ban starting in the 2024-2025 season, explaining on its meeting agenda that “somersault type jumps are very spectacular and nowadays it is not logical anymore to include them as illegal movements.”

The backflip can no longer lose a skater points, but it doesn’t count toward their technical score either (it’s not a required move). It could, however, boost a skater’s artistic score and confidence.

“Oh, that’s my favorite part,” U.S. competitive skater Will Annis, 21, said after landing a backflip at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January. “Every time the crowd goes crazy for it, and it’s actually easier than everything else I do, so it’s really fun.”

His definition of “easier” is that “you can be a little off and still land it” on two feet.

Annis told NPR he had long been able to do a backflip on the ground, but didn’t bother learning how to bring it to the ice until he saw Siao Him Fa do it. He was inspired by that protest but didn’t have time to rebel himself: He says the ban was lifted just days before his first competition.