Mom, Why Do All The Olympic Athletes Have Fluorescent Green Trainers?

The other day I was sat in my local pub, half-watching the Olympics on the big screen, a young child and his mother walked slowly past our table, the young boy’s neck was craned awkwardly as he tried to see up at the wall-mounted plasma screen. “Mom,” he said inquisitively, “Why are all the running peoples wearing bright green trainers?”

I didn’t hear what the mother responded to her child, as they had moved out of earshot by the time she formulated her response, but it made me wonder, I looked up at the screen again, and saw that in the race that was about to begin, every single athletes taking part was wearing luminous green running shoes.

I was almost tempted to follow them and ask his mom myself, because suddenly, I really wanted to know too.

Turns out you don’t need mom’s answers when you’ve got the internet and the reason why so many of the Olympians are wearing this eye-catching footwear is because they are athletes that are sponsored by Nike.

Nike decided that it was going to introduce this uniform color across all of its athletes competing in the games and chose this particular shade because research has shown that it is the one that the human eye is most sensitive to.

So even though all of the athletes are wearing the same shoe, they reflect more light than anything on the field and you just can’t help but want to look at them.

This is what Nike is hoping for – that you will be so intrigued and inspired after you have stared at them for an age, you then jog (or get the bus) down to your local sports retailer and grab yourself a pair.

You’ve got to admit that it is a pretty awesome sight to see all those fluorescent feet pelting along, contrasted against the deep red of the racetrack!

Mom, Why Do All The Olympic Athletes Have Fluorescent Green Trainers?