As the Tour de France kicks off in Barcelona this weekend, a brand better known in football in recent years will be helping Jonas Vingegaard and the Visma-Lease a Bike team tackle La Grande Boucle.
Nike has unveiled a limited-edition ‘Étoile’ collaboration with Italian premium cycling shoe brand Nimbl. It builds on a relationship that began at the start of 2026 with Nike supplying footwear for “podium and media moments”, with everyone in the team also equipped with Nike running shoes.
May 2026 saw the launch of the Nimbl x Nike Ultimate Exceed Stardust Origine edition, designed to celebrate Jonas Vingegaard’s wins in all three Grand Tours. The new Nimbl x Nike Ultimate Exceed Étoile Edition, like that earlier shoe, is based on the Nimbl Exceed Pro and is priced at £579.95.
Nimbl already supplied Visma-Lease a Bike’s racing shoes, but for Nike the return of the Swoosh to WorldTour footwear represents a reentry into a sport it was once preparing to dominate – just as it has done with running and football – before stepping out almost completely in 2012.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the US company produced road shoes that were worn widely in the pro peloton, most notably by Lance Armstrong who first signed an endorsement deal with Nike in 1996. The deal resulted in the super-high-end Nike Lance, developed especially for him and bought by adoring fans, while other Nike road shoes such as the Poggio started to make the more established Italian shoe brands look decidedly down at heel.
Armstrong was one of Nike’s most valuable global ambassadors, and it reputedly paid him around $40 million over the years until it terminated its sponsorship in 2012 following the USADA investigation into his doping programme. Armstrong “misled Nike for over a decade” said the company in a statement at the time.
Nike had been scaling back its cycling shoe production from around 2008 and almost entirely disappeared in the 2010s, occasionally making custom shoes for athletes including Mark Cavendish and Dani King.
Now, instead of reentering the road cycling market independently, Nike has partnered with Nimbl, the Italian manufacturer whose premium shoes are now well established in the WorldTour riders. Nimbl has supplied Visma-Lease a Bike since 2023. But is this just dipping in a microfibre and carbon toe before a full cycling comeback by the world’s largest sportswear brand?
Kieran Ronan, Nike’s lead for the collaboration, says in the press release: “At Nike, our focus is on serving athletes and pushing what’s possible through innovation. Partnering with Nimbl brings together a shared obsession with performance and opens new opportunities to shape the future of cycling.”
Meanwhile, Poppo Hofsteenge, who leads the collaboration for Pon Bike – the parent company of Cervélo, Nimbl and Lease a Bike – says: “This partnership was born from a shared conviction: in racing, obsessive attention to detail is everything. Nimbl brings elite, handcrafted cycling precision, while Nike delivers unparalleled mastery in advanced materials and athletic innovation. Together, we aren't just launching a product – we are writing a new chapter for the sport of cycling."
So it's unclear what Nike’s next step will be, but it’s certainly significant and evocative that the Swoosh is back on high-end road race shoes, even if the shoe itself is an existing Nimbl model. It seems that enough time has passed since the end of the previous, very complicated chapter for Nike to finally turn the page.
For more information visit Nimbl's website.
