Nike’s Ekiden Collection and the Fiery Zoom Streak Spectr…

Where did Olive Radcliffe get her sneakers? It was a fair question for anyone who spotted the octagenarian on one of her frequent walks, her feet clad in custom Nike racing flats and pairs with graphics of bright flames licking their uppers. Where was this old woman sourcing flashy running shoes like the Nike Air Streak Ekiden? Her granddaughter Paula Radcliffe, the British distance runner who set longstanding women’s marathon world records in the 2000s, put her on.

The younger Radcliffe made marathon history multiple times in flame-decorated versions of the Streak Ekiden 5, a shoe stemming from Nike’s Ekiden line catering to Japanese runners. She would pass her pairs on to her beloved grandma, who put them to good use.

“She walked pretty much every day,” Radcliffe says. “It was easier for her to walk in racing flats than a heavier shoe. She used to think it was so cool that she had a pair of shoes with her granddaughter’s name on them.”

Radcliffe’s teenage son Raphael has not appreciated her old footwear in the same way. The fast-growing 14-year-old, who runs cross country, was briefly the right size to fit into his mother’s spikes. He’d borrow them to wear, so long as they were not the ones Nike made with special “Paula” embroidery on the uppers.

“Mom,” he said, “I am not running in a pair with your name on it.”

After Radcliffe wore her customized flame pairs of Air Streak Ekidens to set women’s marathon world records, in Chicago in 2002 and then again in London in 2003, Nike released the similar Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus. The Streak Spectrum Plus used the same tooling on the sole and flames as Radcliffe’s Ekidens, but with a different upper.

Nike will borrow from that history of fiery sneakers this week with a global release of the 2025 Ekiden Collection, a pack of modern running shoes inspired by the Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus. It features the Alphafly 3 ($285), Rival Fly 4 ($100), Vaporfly 3 ($260), and Zoom Fly 6 ($180). The white-based colorways are dressed in blazing accents that run down the front of the shoes. Like the originals, they look like Hot Wheels for your feet.

The collection is named for the Japanese ekiden, a long-distance relay race format, and timed to arrive ahead of the Hakone Ekiden, the popular collegiate relay that’s held in Japan every January. The 2025 Ekiden Collection released in Japan on Nov. 22 and launches globally on Dec. 4, per Nike. The collection won’t hit North America until Jan. 2.

The collection is rooted in Japanese running culture via its source material in the Spectrum. But the Zoom Streak Spectrum’s range is broader than that.

The shoe carried the torch from the designs Radcliffe wore. It began as a niche running model only to pop back up years later as an unexpected hype collab. The Ekiden Collection extends the Spectrum’s legacy, transferring the shoes’ Guy Fieri graphics to a new generation of runners.

Paula Radcliffe’s Marathon-Record-Breaking Shoes

As a professional runner, Radcliffe was fastidious about the shoes she wore. She knew exactly what she needed. She suffered from a nonunion navicular stress fracture in her foot in 1994 and required shoes that wouldn’t agitate the injury. And she supinates, turning her feet inward when she strikes, meaning she needed a wide outsole.

“I have had to be really careful with my shoes, that my arch is well supported,” Radcliffe says.

One of the reasons why Radcliffe signed with Nike in 2001 was it allowed for a two-way conversation about her footwear, where she and the brand could exchange notes on what worked best for her. After a training session, she and Nike track and field developer John Truax would go over her shoes with a Sharpie, leaving notes on where changes should be made.

“They were very keen to hear feedback from the runners to modify and adapt and work with that going forward,” says Radcliffe, who still has a relationship with Nike.

After Radcliffe won the World Cross Country Championships in 2001, she wanted to move to longer road races. Up to that point, she’d mostly raced 10Ks. Starting that year, she wore the Air Streak Ekiden, more specifically the Air Streak Ekiden 5, for half marathons. She landed on the Streak Ekiden instead of Nike’s lighter, even more minimal race shoes, which she didn’t think would work for her.

Radcliffe went the extra mile—or hundreds of miles—to make sure her footwear was appropriate. When she’d get new shoes at the beginning of a season, she would travel to Belgium, where her podiatrist was, with bags of footwear in tow.

“We would basically run over force plates in them and just make sure I was in the right shoe for me,” Radcliffe says.

Truax, who later worked as a developer on the Streak Spectrum Plus, remembers Radcliffe as having a violent gait, which necessitated tough shoes.

“She landed pretty aggressively on that lateral forefoot,” Truax says, “and so she was just crushing the midsole and the outsole through that area.”

For that reason, shoes like the Ekiden and Spectrum weren’t ideal for Radcliffe, according to Truax. They had the wider sole she needed, but she would blow through the soft rubber Duralon outsoles. As a solution, Truax says, Nike eventually built a new shoe around her called the Zoom Marathoner, giving the sole a firmer crash pad on the lateral side of the forefoot to better suit her running style.

That’s not to say that the Air Streak Ekiden wasn’t a suitable tool for Radcliffe as she made the move up to the marathon. When she won the London Marathon in 2002, she had the Streak Ekidens on feet—albeit a pair without the flame treatment. When she set a world record women’s marathon time of 2:17:18 at the Chicago Marathon later that year, she crossed the finish line in Streak Ekidens with blue and yellow flames on them. When Radcliffe smashed her own world record the next year, clocking 2:15:25 at the 2003 London Marathon, she wore the flame Ekidens again.

Radcliffe isn’t quite sure how she landed on the Air Streak Ekiden and its fiery graphics. The ekiden race is sentimental for her—at age 16, one of her first international races was an ekiden in Hawaii—which might have influenced her selection. Plus, the speedy promise of the flame illustrations gelled with a belief held by Radcliffe, her husband, and her physical therapist: if it looks fast, you can run fast.

The Original Nike Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus

The fast look was the work of sneaker designer Steven Smith, a man with a taste for quirky designs and dangerously quick automobiles. (This writer, who’s ridden passenger in Smith’s vintage Porsche, can personally attest to the latter.) Smith started his career at New Balance in 1986 and later spent time at Adidas, Reebok, and Nike. Many of the models he worked on in the ’80s and ’90s—the New Balance 550, the Reebok Insta Pump Fury—stuck around as retros, giving his portfolio a degree of staying power.

Smith arrived at Nike in 1999. Soon, he was contributing designs for Nike Japan, where sales were sluggish. His partner in this was Nike Japan employee Toshiya Inotani, who showed Smith around Tokyo.

“He knew how much I loved vintage shopping and hot rod stuff, so he would take me,” Smith says, recounting his adventures with Inotani. “The minute I landed, we wouldn’t even go the fucking Nike office, he’d take me vintage shopping, to the hot rod stores and stuff.”

At those shops, the duo found fire decals, like the kind you’d see on an old muscle car. Inotani thought they would read beautifully on the right racing shoe. Smith translated the flames into an Adobe Illustrator file and superimposed them onto the pattern shell of the running sneakers he was working on. From there, the Air Streak Ekiden and Zoom Streak Spectrum plus got their signature graphics.

The exact history and timeline of the shoes and the subtle differences between them is a little murky. Per Inotani, Nike released its first Air Streak Ekiden series shoe around 1995, exclusively in Japan. In his recollection, the Air Streak Ekiden 5, like the ones Radcliffe wore, were essentially a global style of the Japan-exclusive Zoom Streak Spectrum with minor changes. After that came Radcliffe’s special edition flame colorways of the Air Streak Ekiden, and after that came the Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus—both models with flames and same tooling.

“Nike Japan invested lots of energy into Japanese marathons, ekiden and long distance, because Nike was not a leading authentic running brand in Japan at that time,” Inotani says. “Domestic brands like ASICS and Mizuno—they dominated the authentic running market.”

His mission was to change that and convince Japanese runners that they could rely on Nike for high-performance running shoes. The Nike Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus, which Inotani submitted the product brief for, was part of that effort. He hoped it could change how marathon shoes looked and ignite legit interest for Nike’s performance running shoes in Japan.

Inotani and Smith turned to college-aged ekiden athletes for insights when making the shoe.

“We went to the dorm and hung out with them and soaked it in,” Smith says, “what they were looking for and everything.”

Inotani guided Smith’s hand as he designed, making sure the shoe was well suited for the Japanese market.

“I would draw the midsole,” Smith says. “And of course, Nike US, they wanted it taller.”

Inotani wanted it shorter, just barely.

“Lower the topline one millimeter,” he urged Smith. And then, “perfect.”

Smith says that to Inotani, that made all the difference on the silhouette. To the developers who had to actually execute the designs, it was maddening. They would lose their minds over the nearly imperceptible difference a millimeter made, but Inotani reiterated that the difference mattered, according to Smith.

The Nike Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus released in 2003 and retailed for $75 (that’s around $128 in today’s money). Catalogs from the time described the running shoe as having a low-profile Phylon midsole, Zoom Air unit in the heel, TPU midfoot shank, and a Duralon outsole. There were at least two colorways, both white-based: one with blue and green flames, the other with red and orange flames.

Those who worked on the Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus agree that it wasn’t a huge hit. According to Smith, the shoe went over well in Japan and had some crossover in other countries; Spain, for example, appreciated the relatively flat, low silhouette. Inotani says the Streak Spectrum Plus didn’t drive significant revenue but helped set Nike apart, thanks to its unique graphics, and created excitement amongst some young athletes.

“They never did that great,” Truax remembers, “it was pretty small numbers.” That was standard for Nike’s racing flats, which were made for a relatively small group of competitive athletes.

Even if the sneaker wasn’t globally successful, it had an impact. Inotani calls the unusual model a legendary piece of the Nike archive. Nike designer Katsunobu “Asapon” Asayama, who grew up in Japan and designed the new Ekiden Collection that references the flaming Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus, coveted the shoe.

“My memory of the original Spectrum Plus goes back to 2003,” Asapon says. “I was working as a salesclerk at a clothing store in Osaka. I vividly remember the Spectrum Plus being accepted by people who dressed in edgy and unique outfits. The original was sold out in my size.”

Smith is sitting on a handful of pairs of the originals—he even has Streak Ekidens with the “Paula” embroidered on the tongue. Truax has a few stashed in his basement. But Asapon, who was years away from working at Nike when the Streak Spectrum debuted, had to wait 15 years until he got another crack at it.

The Supreme x Nike Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus

The Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus looked for the longest time like it would be doomed to obscurity. Its predecessor, Radcliffe’s Air Streak Ekiden, was part of important moments, but the Streak Spectrum Plus never crossed over. It wasn’t a shoe that most sneaker collectors knew about, much less cared about enough to spend money on a reissue.

Before Nike started raiding its back catalog of Y2K runners, it was an unlikely candidate for a retro—why would the brand bring back a shoe that relatively few people bought into in the first place?

But an unlikely candidate has never stopped Supreme. The heavyweight streetwear brand’s cachet appears strong enough to convince Nike to bring back the most extremely left-field silhouettes specifically for Supreme projects. (Literally nobody was asking for the return of the Courtposite.) In 2018, Nike brought back the original Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus via a collaboration with Supreme. The project kept the original design mostly intact, updating it with small Supreme logo hits.

Smith didn’t see the retro coming—he found out about the Supreme pairs at the same time the public did. The Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus’ return came out of nowhere.

“That really blew me away,” Smith told Complex in 2018.

Smith, at that point most known as the mastermind behind Yeezy footwear, seized on the opportunity to let the public know he’d designed the originals. Radcliffe never got a pair. Asapon, who’d missed out on the original Streak Spectrum Plus all those years ago, made sure he did.

“When Supreme brought them back in 2018,” the Nike designer says, “I was glued to the online store and purchased it at the same time as the launch.”

The shoes sold out quickly, like most Supreme Nike collaborations back then. Nike successfully resurrected the model, but not for long. After Supreme’s two pairs released that June, Nike dropped two additional colorways of the shoe sans Supreme in August, with clashing colorways that hid the flames. Neither sold well—you can still buy them on StockX for under their retail price years later—and Nike quietly vaulted the shoe again.

Nike Rekindles the Flame on Ekiden Collection

Asapon, the Japanese Nike designer responsible for the 2025 Ekiden Collection, took a journey similar to Smith’s when working on the shoes. It began with a visit to Tokyo. Asapon met with ekiden racers in October 2023 to get insights on their training and what they wanted in footwear.

“It became obvious that this race is the biggest day of their lives—it’s like playing in the Super Bowl in the States,” Asapon says. “They are looking for every advantage on race day. They wanted colors and graphics that not only looked fast but made them feel fast, too. And, it couldn’t be just another racing shoe. The shoe needed to feel like it was from, and of, Japan.”

Asapon is well familiar with the cultural significance and drama of the ekiden—he grew up watching the races on TV. For Nike’s 2025 Ekiden Collection, intended for the 101st running of the major Hakone Ekiden come January, he looked for a muse that could suit a next generation of racers. In Japan, flames represent new beginnings. For this Asapon went backward, to the old Streak Spectrum Plus, a distinctly Japanese shoe.

He had his memory of the Streak Spectrum Plus, and the physical Supreme shoe, but those were insufficient to transmit the fire from the old designs to the new ones. Asapon went to Nike’s internal archive to review an original pair in order to best recreate its graphics.

“We were lucky that some of the original product creation team is still around Nike,” Asapon says. “We partnered with them and were able to secure the exact artwork from the original Spectrum Plus. The flame graphic was modified slightly to ensure it cohesively integrated on the uppers of our modern racing innovations.”

At Nike, Asapon is a graphics designer who works on Nike’s “express lane” footwear. Express lane product comes to market quicker than standard Nike creations—the goal is to get consumer insights and turn them around with relative speed. So like the shoes, and their graphics, Asapon had to be fast.

He wasn’t designing entirely new models—the 2025 Ekiden Collection is essentially a graphic update to existing Nike running shoes. But he was introducing a new kind of production to Nike’s Flyknit sneakers, which usually do not have graphics printed on them.

“The challenge was to print the gradient flame graphic over the Flyknit upper,” Asapon says. “Most printing methods compromise the stretch or breathability of Flyknit. We worked across multiple teams to find a solution.”

Asapon’s team connected with others from Nike’s Advanced Product Creation Center and Bowerman Footwear Lab at its headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. They went through at least four different printing methods before landing on one that was reliable enough to use for production.

Asapon and his colleagues visited the factory where the 2025 Ekiden Collection sneakers were to be produced, examining the physical samples in order to reduce the lead time. He says that the trip allowed them to solve problems on the shoe that shortened its creation timeline, which took about a year total.

The project brings a bit of Asapon’s sneaker history full circle. He coveted the Zoom Streak Spectrum Plus as a young man and years later, as a designer at Nike, helped interpolate the archive model into something new. He watches ekiden races as he did back then, but now he pays extra attention to the sneakers, keeping an eye out for runners wearing his projects.

The shoes also mark a return to form for Radcliffe, who is back in fiery Nikes after the brand sent her a pair of the Zoom Fly 6 from the 2025 Ekiden collection. Decades removed from her ekiden debut in Hawaii, she organizes her own ekiden-style races for families. And years after the end of her pro running career, Radcliffe still has marathons left in her.

She wants to cross off a few more races in order to come closer to completing the full cycle of world marathon majors—she’s missing Boston, Tokyo, and the newly added Sydney. She plans to run the Boston Marathon in 2025 and has already signed up for Tokyo.

One assumes she’ll be wearing Nike’s inferno footwear from the Ekiden Collection when she crosses the finish line in Tokyo for the first time. Radcliffe knows she’s far off her peak pace, but seeing the flaming Nikes on her feet brings back memories of her fastest runs.

“You just look down, and even though I’m a lot slower than I was in 2003, it’s almost like it looks the same as it used to,” Radcliffe says. “It’s just not quite the quick cadence that it was.”