PRO ELITE
CLUBS

The club side of Pro Elite

Most Pro Elite kit in this archive belongs to national federations: the vest a country issues its team for a championship cycle. This line is the other branch of the same tree. Nike also dresses clubs — a defunct corporate super-team in Oregon, a military sports centre outside Rome, the athletics section of a football giant, and a serial French champion from the Paris suburbs — and their kit is issued the same way: to the team, never to a shop.

The garments say so themselves. Pro Elite pieces carry athlete-only issue labelling, and Nike has never published a page explaining which clubs it equips or how — so, as everywhere in this archive, the physical piece is the document. Seven of them sit in this line, from four clubs whose stories could hardly be more different.

The chart above puts those four stories on one axis. Three lanes keep running. One stops in October 2019 — and that ending is worth telling properly, because it is also why its shirt is here.

The Oregon Project: a club that ended

The Nike Oregon Project was founded in 2001 on the company's Beaverton campus by Alberto Salazar together with Nike executive Tom Clarke, built to drag American distance running back to world level. For most of two decades it looked like the most successful club experiment in the sport: Mo Farah joined in 2011 and set European records from 1500 m to the half marathon; Galen Rupp set the American 10,000 m record and won Chicago 2017; Sifan Hassan arrived in 2017 and, in 2019, ran a mile world record in Monaco. What they won for their countries in those years was won in federation kit, and lives in the country pages.

The end came in ten days. On 1 October 2019 the US Anti-Doping Agency banned Salazar for four years for anti-doping rule violations — a sports arbitration ruling, upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in September 2021, not a criminal conviction. On 10 October, Nike CEO Mark Parker announced the project's closure, calling the situation a distraction the athletes could not train under. Two facts belong in the same breath: the panel saw no evidence that Oregon Project athletes doped, and none ever tested positive. Separately, the US Center for SafeSport later barred Salazar from the sport permanently over misconduct findings — a different procedure, and where his file still stands.

From this line · in the archiveNike Oregon Project Team Pro Elite T-ShirtA training tee of a club that no longer exists — worn by an Oregon Project athlete, in the neon that marked the group's kit.240,00 €View piece →

The athletes moved on. Farah retired in September 2023 and never had an adverse finding to his name. Rupp is still racing and building toward Boston 2026. Hassan — still a Nike athlete — won London and Chicago in 2023 and Sydney in 2025, and sat out London 2026 to heal an injury. The club, though, is finished, which changes what its shirt is: not merchandise, but the last physical trace of a team you can no longer join.

The full story — the founding, the roster's medals, the ten days of October 2019 and where everyone is now — has its own chapter: read the Oregon Project post →.

Aeronautica Militare: kit with a rank

The Centro Sportivo dell'Aeronautica Militare is the sports arm of the Italian Air Force, founded in 1964 at Vigna di Valle on Lake Bracciano, where a six-lane track now sits on what was once an airship field. Italy runs much of its athletics through military and police sports groups, and the Air Force is one of them: its athletes enlist, hold rank and draw a salary while they train full-time.

The roster runs from history — Pietro Mennea and triple jumper Giuseppe Gentile both passed through, and long jumper Andrew Howe is on its honour roll — to a very current star: shot putter Leonardo Fabbri, who threw a world-leading 22.82 m in August 2025 and collected his twelfth Italian title in February 2026; the podiums he has stood on for Italy since 2023 were won in federation kit.

From this line · in the archiveNike Aeronautica Militare Pro Elite JacketThe Air Force training jacket in service navy — cotton, crested, and nothing like a retail piece.150,00 €View piece →

The two Aeronautica pieces in the archive — a jacket and a polo, both in the corps' dark blue — are training issue, new with tags. Nike publishes nothing about dressing the Centro Sportivo, so the garments themselves are the record that it does.

The corps has its own chapter too — Vigna di Valle, the military-athlete system and Fabbri's service record: read the Aeronautica Militare post →.

Barcelona and Montreuil: a century of club vests

The other two lanes belong to civilian club athletics at its strongest. FC Barcelona has run an athletics section since 1915, and its vests have been worn by Spanish club athletics royalty for a century — today that means triple jump above all: Yulimar Rojas, world record holder at 15.74 m, renewed with the club through 2026 and back to 14.76 in 2025 after two years out with an Achilles rupture; and Jordan Díaz, whose 18.18 m in Rome in 2024 is the third-longest jump in history. Nike has dressed FC Barcelona since 1998 under a club-wide deal renewed through 2038 that covers its technical apparel; the athletics pieces in this archive — a 2022 distance singlet and a 2025 crop top in the bla­ugrana palette — are what that looks like on a start line.

From this line · in the archiveNike FCB Pro Elite 2025 Women Crop TopThe 2025 women's crop in the club's red, blue and gold — a football crest built for a track.120,00 €View piece →

CA Montreuil 93 is the opposite kind of aristocracy: a neighbourhood omnisports club from Seine-Saint-Denis, founded in 1943 by a Montreuil tavern keeper named Jean Delbert, that grew into the most decorated club in French athletics — twenty Interclubs national titles, including fourteen in a row from 1997 to 2010, the latest in 2024, and runners-up again in 2026. Its athletes wrote real history: Michel Jazy set nine world records in its colours, Roger Bambuck equalled the 100 m world record in 1968, Françoise Mbango and Teddy Tamgho jumped for global titles in their countries' kit, and Jimmy Vicaut — whose 9.86 stood as the shared European 100 m record until 2021 — ran his fastest club races in this vest.

From this line · in the archiveNike CA Montreuil 93 Pro Elite 2023 Lightwear JacketCAM93 training kit from the 2023 season — the year of the club's nineteenth French title.80,00 €View piece →

Between them, the two clubs hold the point of this whole line: club kit is issued in numbers a federation would consider a rounding error, worn hard, and never sold. When a piece surfaces, it surfaces once.

Both clubs have their own chapters: FC Barcelona athletics → · CA Montreuil 93 →.