designed to win: bespoke performance sprint shoe

‘designed to win’, a 3D-printed, bespoke performance sprint shoe by luc fusaro

french-born luc fusaro, masters candidate at london’s royal college of art has developed the bespoke athlete performance shoe ‘designed to win‘. it is the most lightweight sprint shoe ever made at 96 grams, and the only stiff form to be composed of a single piece. prototype testing demonstrates that the shoe improves performance by 3.5%, which for olympic athletes might be the 0.35 second sprinting difference required to place in an event.

each shoe is custom-designed for the individual athlete. fusaro’s process begins with a 3D scan of the person’s foot. on the computer, fusaro generates the form of the sole, whose thickness varies in accordance with the foot’s specific structure. a testing environment lets him test tension and flexibility on the unit, before 3D printing it in sintered nylon polyamide powder.

the 3D-printed prototype

video documentation of the project

process – the shoe begins with a 3D scan of the athlete’s foot

process – the sole is developed and tested on the computer, in specific accordance to the athlete’s foot shape

view of the cleats on a 3D printed prototype

the prototype shoes used for performance testing, which demonstrated a 3.5% improvement in speed

via reuters via dvice