Watch

Spray on shoes looking to win gold at this year's Olympics

  • elocal magazine By elocal magazine
  • Jul 29, 2024

Swiss brand On is embracing advanced spray-on materials with a robot-made sneaker. They believe it can improve performance at this month’s Paris Olympics.

The Cloudboom Strike LS is lace-free and is designed to be more adaptable, dynamic and supportive than your average running sneakers. And they are extremely lightweight. A men’s US size 8.5 weighs just 170g per shoe.

The shoes already have a convincing track reco

rd: Kenyan runner Hellen Obiri, triumphed at this year’s Boston Marathon wearing a pair.

Its inventor, Johannes Voelchert, came up with the idea as a student after seeing a Halloween-themed hot glue gun that shot decorative spiderwebs. “I saw that there was a quick way of creating a textile onto a complex shape,” Voelchert, now On’s senior lead of innovation concept design, said in the brand’s video. “A shoe seemed to be the right object.”

The company claims its technology reduces the carbon emissions of producing a shoe’s upper by 75%, compared to its other sneaker models.

Avatar