Nike Pro Elite
2019

The Autumn Cycle

Ask a collector which Pro Elite generation matters most and the answer is usually 2019 — and the reason is not a medal table. It is what Nike race kit did on the roads that year, most of it inside eleven weeks of autumn: a world record for the half marathon, a marathon two seconds off the world record, a women's marathon record by eighty-one seconds, a world 10 km record, and a man covering the distance in under two hours. This page reads that season; the brand pillar carries the full Pro Elite story around it.

Eleven Weeks of Nike Race Kit

It started in April: Eliud Kipchoge won London in 2:02:37, then the second-fastest marathon ever run. The autumn began in Copenhagen on 15 September, when Geoffrey Kamworor took the half marathon world record to 58:01. Two weeks later Kenenisa Bekele won Berlin in 2:01:41, two seconds outside Kipchoge's record, with a 34-year-old's second half. Then Vienna, 12 October: on a closed loop in the Prater, behind a rotating phalanx of pacers, Kipchoge ran 1:59:40. Not a record, and not needing to be one. The next morning in Chicago, Brigid Kosgei ran 2:14:04 in the same Nike Vaporfly Next% he had worn — eighty-one seconds under Paula Radcliffe's sixteen-year-old world record. Kamworor won New York on 3 November, his second in three years, and on 1 December Joshua Cheptegei closed the year with 26:38 for 10 km in Valencia, another world record.

Kipchoge, Kamworor, Bekele and Cheptegei all raced as members of the NN Running Team, the Nike-outfitted squad founded two years earlier; Kosgei came through the Rosa & Co stable, also in Nike. None of the three records survived: Kandie took the half marathon mark in December 2020, Kipruto the 10 km in January 2020, and the women's marathon has moved on twice since. Bekele left Nike for Anta in October 2023 after more than twenty years. What stays is the concentration — no other Pro Elite generation sat on so much history in so few weeks. For a collector, a 2019 piece is not one championship. It is the whole autumn.

The Channel Changes Hands

Two of Nike's own structures ended in 2019. In July, Allyson Felix — a Nike athlete since 2003 — left for Athleta after a public dispute over maternity protection in her contract. On 1 October USADA banned Alberto Salazar for four years; on 10 October Nike closed the Oregon Project, the distance group it had run since 2001. The project's last summer had produced its best mark: Sifan Hassan, then coached inside it, ran a European 3000 m record of 8:18.49 at the Prefontaine Classic on 30 June and, twelve days later in Monaco, a mile world record of 4:12.33 that stood until 2023.

The Doha World Championships that closed on 6 October were the federations' season — Team USA's fourteen golds in the Nike kit of USATF are in our USA 2019 page and Kenya's medals in Kenya 2019; this page is about the kit Nike issues to its own athletes.

The Kit of the Cycle

The 2019 generation is the most recognisable Pro Elite colourway ever issued: royal blue cut with volt-green digital shatter camo — split-print singlets, geometric-stripe women's speedsuits and matching arm sleeves. Competition-weight cloth, race cuts, print in the build; no retail version was ever sold. Three pieces of the cycle have reached our archive, and one has already sold — the women's sleeved speedsuit, the rarest silhouette of the year.

Construction follows the athlete-issue rules our authentication guide covers: competition-weight cloth, race cuts, no retail run. “Pro Elite” is the athlete-channel label collectors use — the programme Nike itself keeps off the shelves. Federation kit is a different contract: what USATF or Athletics Kenya wear at a Worlds lives in our country pages, not here.

From this cycle · in the archiveNike Pro Elite Team 2019 Arm SleevesRace-issue from the 2019 cycle itself — the volt shatter-camo generation of the autumn of 1:59:40.200,00 €View piece →

The Full Cycle in the Archive

Every piece we hold from the 2019 cycle, grouped by edition — in-stock first, sold pieces dimmed and documented, refreshed against live stock. The full brand story is in the Nike pillar.

Nike Pro Elite Team 2019 Arm Sleeves200,00 €View Piece →Nike Pro Elite Team 2019 T-Shirt250,00 €View Piece →Nike 2019 Pro Elite Women Sleeves SpeedsuitSold out · check back soonView Piece →