I spent nearly eight years at Nike — including a stint in Valiant Labs, their internal new business incubator. I've also been a fan of the ACG line since the 90s, back when everything seemed to make more sense. So this was a fun one to dive into, and I think I was able to bring a different perspective to the conversation.
Right now, ACG is everywhere. The Winter Olympics. Team USA. A branded train through the Italian Alps. A standalone store opening in Beijing. Social conversations mentioning ACG and the Olympics spiked 273% in a single week. The @ACG Instagram account hit 48,000 followers in its first two weeks. If you're anywhere near the outdoor or running world, you can't scroll past it.
And the product is genuinely good this time. The ACG Ultrafly went through 13 rounds of testing and over 30,000 miles of development — that's unusual even by Nike standards. Caleb Olson won Western States in it. Reviewers who dismissed the V1 as basically a road shoe with a Vibram outsole are admitting the V2 is a legit trail shoe. One tester said it best: "Nothing was left to chance."
So Nike is back in outdoor. Case closed?
Not exactly.
We've been tracking sentiment around the ACG relaunch, and the picture is way more nuanced than the headlines suggest. What we're seeing isn't one reaction — it's several distinct camps, and the tensions between them tell the real story.
The core trail community is in "prove it" mode. These are the people who actually run ultras, who volunteer at aid stations, who've watched Nike dip in and out of this sport for years. One Substack writer nailed the mood: Nike's history in trail "resembles a yo-yo — they've ducked in with products that didn't really land, thought they could walk in without investing in the grassroots, and then retreated." On Reddit, a trail runner put it more bluntly: "I don't count on Nikes because they don't design for the vast majority of use cases."
Industry analysts are saying the same thing in more polished language — noting that brands like Hoka and Salomon built their credibility through years of consistent category focus. Even iRunFar, one of the most respected voices in ultrarunning media, flagged a specific concern: merging the Nike Trail brand into ACG "risks losing some of the legitimacy and goodwill the Nike Trail brand has built over the past decade."
This group isn't anti-Nike. They're anti-abandonment. They'll believe it when Nike is still showing up in 2028.
The product-focused runners are cautiously impressed — with a specific caveat that keeps coming up. The V2 is getting genuinely strong reviews. Road Trail Run called it "a highly competitive, top shelf trail and ultra racer." The split carbon plate, wider toebox, and improved upper all address real complaints from V1. Multiple testers were surprised by how versatile it feels across pace and distance.
But the terrain limitation issue is real, and it's more nuanced than just geography. Believe in the Run's review — published this week — is probably the most honest take out there. One of their testers said the Ultrafly was "an absolute monster on smoother terrain" but on technical trails in the Rockies, the carbon plate would launch him in unpredictable directions on off-camber steps. He called out Nike's own marketing for claiming the shoe handles "Less to Highly Technical" terrain, calling it "simply not true." Another tester said the plate was so stiff it left him sore enough to take a week off. A third reviewer flagged that it's slippery in muddy conditions — the chevron lugs pack up in wet terrain.
This isn't a quality issue. It's a design philosophy issue. The Ultrafly is optimized for speed on groomed and moderate terrain — gravel roads, fire roads, buffed-out singletrack. That works great for Western States and Black Canyon. But the trail community is national and global, and a shoe branded "All Conditions Gear" that doesn't perform in all conditions is going to hear about it.
The grassroots watchers are tracking what Nike is actually investing in — not just what they're promoting. This is the camp that cuts through the marketing noise and looks at where the dollars are going. And what they're seeing is actually interesting.
The Broken Arrow Skyrace deal is the biggest signal. It's a multi-year title sponsorship with a $150,000 prize purse — the largest of any independent trail race in the world. The men's and women's winners of the 23K take home $30,000 each, which tops even UTMB. Nike also launched Trail Futures NTN (Nike Trail Nationals), a youth national championship modeled on the Nike Cross Nationals program that's been a pipeline in cross country for two decades. Add in the Gorge Waterfalls sponsorship ($75K purse), inclusivity initiatives supporting BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ run clubs with entries, gear, and travel stipends, expanded spectator access using ski lift infrastructure, and on-course lactation stations — and you start to see a playbook that goes beyond branded trains.
This camp sees those investments and says: this is different. This isn't Nike showing up for a photo op at UTMB and disappearing. This is infrastructure. Race prize money. Youth development. Community access. These are the signals the core community actually watches for — and the ones that take the longest to build.
The question is whether Nike maintains this level of grassroots investment when the launch hype fades.
And then there are the scale skeptics — people who recognize that Nike's sheer size creates a cultural challenge in a community that's allergic to heavy-handedness. Believe in the Run captured this well: Nike shows up with "every ounce of marketing energy they got" and they're "not exactly subtle in letting the trail scene know that they're here."
The Winter Olympics activation is Exhibit A. Team USA outfitted head to toe. The Jannik Sinner campaign post getting nearly 200,000 likes. A branded commuter train through the Italian Alps. Jefferies analysts calling it "a smart, potentially material move." Euromonitor forecasting outdoor sportswear to grow from $59.3 billion to $83.5 billion by 2030.
This is Nike doing what Nike does best — creating cultural moments at a scale nobody else in outdoor can match. But trail running just went through a version of this with UTMB's Ironman acquisition — a technically sound commercial move that created real backlash because it felt imposed on a community that values independence. The bigger the spectacle, the more this camp wonders: is this really for the community, or is the community just the backdrop?
Here's what I think, having sat on campus for a long time.
Nike's quarterly revenue is roughly 18x Hoka's. They could buy every independent trail race in North America and not notice it on the balance sheet. The question was never whether Nike had the resources. It was whether they had the patience.
Trail running is a sport that rewards showing up consistently in small ways over a long period of time. It's the opposite of a launch moment. And it's the opposite of how Nike typically operates.
The product is there. The scale is there. The heritage is there. What's left is the hardest part: earning trust from a community that has a very long memory, and doing it on their timeline, not Nike's.
I'll be watching this one closely. If you're in brand strategy, you should be too — because this is a case study in the tension between scale and authenticity playing out in real time.
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