MILAN — The video that Madison Chock posted to social media in 2023 didn’t only show herself and Evan Bates, her husband and ice-dancing partner, in costume. It also included the original designs, sketched by Chock, that served as their inspiration.
“I am now available for costume design consultations,” she wrote.
Chock’s design business quickly gained clients — her competitors.
For the last three years leading up to this month’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, Chock has held dual roles as an athlete and entrepreneur, at once trying to beat her competition while also outfitting many of them. In a sport where presentation matters to a pair’s score, 10 skaters donned costumes designed by the U.S. star, she said, including the ice-dancing pairs from Spain, Australia and Georgia.
“I’m helping my direct competition with their costumes, and I think that’s a really beautiful thing about our sport,” Chock told NBC News last fall. “Something that I’m happy to do is to share that creativity and help other skaters create something that they feel good in and are excited to wear when they perform. Because I have had costumes that I didn’t always feel my best in, and I know how much of a hindrance that can be when you’re not feeling your absolute best.”
Many a performance sportswear brand’s origin story starts with an athlete. Usually, though, it’s an ex-athlete. Phil Knight co-founded Nike after he finished his career as a University of Oregon distance runner. Gymnasts Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci started a gymnastics clothing line and gym-equipment supplier after they’d already become Olympic medalists. TYR, the maker of swimsuits worn by Olympians for decades, was founded by Steve Furniss, a 1972 bronze-medalist swimmer.
Chock, however, has balanced building a business while still in her competitive prime. And she’s not alone.
U.S. Paralympian Mike Schultz only got into snowboarding after a 2008 accident led to the amputation of his left leg 3 inches above his knee, ending his career racing snowmobiles. When he had recovered, Schultz was so unsatisfied with the options for competition-ready prosthetics that he created his own. It proved so popular he started a business, BioDapt, to manufacture his designs like the Moto Knee, which, he estimates, is used by 99% of lower-limb amputee Paralympians.
“Anytime I’m lining up in the start gate,” Schultz said, “I’m lined up against the equipment I built in my shop not too long before.”
They aren’t the first Olympians to influence the very equipment their sport uses. South Korean short track speedskater Kim Ki-hoon, a gold medalist at the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics, has been credited with innovating the glove that skaters wear on their left hand to maintain balance when they lightly touch the ice around tight corners. Kim poured epoxy that had been left over from strengthening his skates onto the fingertips of a glove on the hunch that it would reduce friction. He likened it to a thimble that protects a sewer's finger.
"It looked exactly like frog fingers, so they became known as 'frog gloves,'" he told Olympics.com.
Even before his life-changing injury, Schultz liked to problem-solve, too. In his workshop, he was handy enough to fabricate trailers for construction sites. But creating the prosthetics, he said, was about more than the bottom line.
It gave him a piece of his life back.
A month after his crash, "I actually broke down and started crying in front of my whole family [when] we were watching a supercross championship highlight film," said Schultz, who had been a 10-time X Games gold medalist in motocross, snowmobile and snowbike. "And what hit the hardest was thinking that I wasn't going to be able to chase a championship again, because that's what my whole life was about leading up to that point."
Schultz said paralympic athletes might be more likely to influence the equipment they themselves use, because it takes someone intimately familiar with a piece of equipment's limitations to tinker with it. He pointed to Zach Williams, a Paralympic Alpine skier from the U.S. who has modified bucket seats used by skiers.
Schultz's business remains a tiny operation, consisting of himself and his wife, with a limited line of prosthetic models. There are two knee models, including one he used to become a Paralympic gold and silver medalist in snowboarding, and three prosthetic feet designed for downhill skiing, recreational activities and high-impact or heavy lifting sports.
In recent years, Schultz said insurance companies had begun to increase their willingness to cover some secondary prosthetics but he hopes more exposure on the Paralympics will increase interest and thus funding to cover such costs.
"When we can be on mainstream TV showcasing this and flying down a mountain, I mean, that's powerful," he said.
