Nike today revealed many of the uniforms that U.S. athletes will wear when they compete at the upcoming 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.
The highlight of the whole set (which you can see here) is what the men’s and women’s basketball teams will wear as they each roll towards yet another gold medal.
The white uniform, seen above, includes a thick red stripe running across the chest from the armpits up and blue striping down either side of the jersey and shorts. This white uniform will be worn by both the men’s and women’s teams while the red uniform will be exclusive to the women’s.
Exclusive to the women’s team, the 2020 USA basketball red uniform features a laurel line at the neck, an ode to the 1996 women’s team who won the gold at the games that summer in Atlanta. It also is a tribute to the wreath placed on the heads of Olympic medal-winners.
On each jersey is twelve stars, one for each player on the team. There’s also a hidden design on the side vent of the shorts which references an 84, for the number of players in the history of the US women’s team, a 10 for their international appearances, and an 8 for the gold medals.
Instead of red, the men’s team will wear a blue secondary uniform which we caught a glimpse of in the background of this interview on CNBC earlier today (h/t @NBurton27)
These new looks are a departure from what we saw in 2016, during the height of “simple designs only, please”
A tournament earlier, for the 2012 games in London, the jerseys featured a chevron-style script across the chest. Let’s go Raptors.
And going back even further, now to a dozen years ago, for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Team USA wore this:
This is probably my favourite set over the past twelve years (though that new women’s red uniform is pretty great, we’ll call it a tie.
The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics get underway on July 24th and run through August 9th.
