Nike Epic React Flyknit 2 'Blue Ribbon Sports'
Colorway: Racer Blue/Black-Orange Peel-White · Style code: CJ5228-400 · Release date: April 4, 2019 · Price: $250 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Epic React Flyknit 'Olive' (AQ0067-300) · Nike Epic React Flyknit 'Mowabb' (AV8068-200) · Nike Epic React Flyknit 'OG' (AQ0067-101) · Nike Epic React Flyknit 'Belgium' (AT0054-700) · Nike Wmns Epic React Flyknit (AQ0070-007)
Before the Swoosh there was a name nobody remembers on a shoebox. Blue Ribbon Sports was founded on January 25, 1964 in Eugene, Oregon by Phil Knight, then a University of Oregon track athlete, and Bill Bowerman, the coach who had trained him. For its first years the operation made nothing at all. It imported running shoes from the Japanese manufacturer Onitsuka Tiger and sold them to runners, often out of the back of a car at track meets.
That arrangement broke down at the turn of the 1970s. On May 30, 1971 the company registered a name of its own, taken from the Greek goddess of victory, and paired it with a mark drawn by graphic designer Carolyn Davidson. The split with Onitsuka Tiger followed the year after.
The royal blue and gold here are the old Blue Ribbon Sports colors dropped onto something from the far end of the same company's history: a Flyknit upper with a reworked weave, a full-length React foam midsole, and a debossed outsole mapped to where pressure actually lands.