Helen Obiri Kenyan long distance runner The two-time Olympic silver medalist will be making history with the shoes at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Obiri will be wearing new sneakers from sportswear manufacturer On, but they’re far from your typical sneaker.
On’s Cloudboom Strike LS is a spray-on footwear.
“LS” stands for LightSpray, the trademark name for the technology used to make these shoes. A mold of a foot is attached to the robot’s arm, The entire upper part of the shoe is spray painted. From a single continuous filament in just 3 minutes According to Fast Company:.
As the robotic arm rotates the shoe, a spray is released, lifting the outsole into the spray. Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) is a material that has the properties of both plastic and rubber, flowing in a spiral pattern, landing as one continuous thread and bonding to the outsole and to itself without the use of adhesives.
The robotic arm then passes the shoes to another robot which sprays the colour onto the shoes. The colour hardens in just three minutes and the shoes are ready to wear.
What makes this technology revolutionary is that the upper of the shoe is the most difficult part to manufacture: while the fluffy outsole is made on a mould, the upper goes through all the intricacies of traditional garment manufacturing: stitching, glue, fabric, tension wires.
“Today’s shoemaking isn’t that modern,” Ilmarine Heitz, On’s senior director of footwear, told the outlet. “You’re just using 2D patterns and then trying to fit them into very complex 3D shapes.”
He added that the material used in LightSpray technology is so form-fitting that athletes often choose to wear it without socks.
The shoes will now have their world premiere at the Paris Olympics, but Obiri was initially hesitant.
“When I first saw the shoes, I said, ‘No,'” Obiri said. The New York Times“‘This won’t work.'”
“In the locker room, my coworkers were like, ‘Are you kidding me?'” she added. “They were like, ‘You can’t run a marathon in these shoes.'”
She wore it during practice and eventually decided to try it out at the Boston Marathon in April. She won.
“She never gave her shoes back,” joked Nils Altrozzi, On’s director of innovation, technology and research.
“When you trust your shoes, it makes you want to go faster,” Obiri said.
On claims that the technology not only shortens production times but also reduces carbon dioxide emissions during production by 75%.
“Part of the vision was that when you go to a race, you have one of these robots, and on race day, whether it’s raining or dry, the robot will spray you with the perfect shoes for that moment,” Heitz explains. “Then, when you’re done with the race, you take them off, recycle them, and head off to the next race.”
Oddly enough, the idea for this kind of production came from Johannes Ferchert, a senior member of On’s innovation team, on Halloween four years ago.
Ferchert saw a video of someone pushing thin threads of hot glue into the fluff of a spider web and wondered if he could make shoes using the same method.
Heitz agreed.
“My instructions were, ‘You go wild, you go crazy, and I’ll pay.’
The Cloudboom Strike LS marks the debut of LightSpray technology. It was first offered for a limited time in April, but will be back in stock this fall for $330, just in time for the New York City Marathon on Sunday, November 3rd.
