The Sprint Sister Was a Women’s-Only Track Spike Before Nike Made It a Sneaker

Nike dates the Sprint Sister in Mystic Dates and Tough Red to October 20, a burgundy and red leather shoe that most people meeting it this year will assume is new. It is not. The name belongs to a track spike Nike built in 1979, and the brand’s own product copy for this release says that spike was made for women only. Finding a purpose-built women’s shoe in Nike’s 1979 catalogue is rare enough that it changes what this release is.

The original Sprint Sister was a middle-distance spike, and the coverage that followed its revival describes it as one of the first track spikes drawn specifically for women rather than scaled down off a men’s last. Nike was still a year from its initial public offering in 1979 and its women’s business barely existed as a separate idea inside the company, so a spike built for women was a statement about who the brand thought it was selling to. The shoe did not stay in the line. Nike brought it back in 2005 as a lifestyle shoe and followed it with premium versions through the rest of that decade, then left it alone for roughly fifteen years. The current revival started earlier in 2026 with a Ridgerock, Ocean Cube, Dark Cinder and Sail colorway that Gear Patrol covered in March. What lands on October 20 is the second wave, and the first to put the shoe in a colorway loud enough to register on a shelf.

The upper runs deep burgundy suede across the toe, heel and mudguard with a brighter red nylon panel through the midfoot, and the two reds sit far enough apart that the shoe reads as two-tone rather than tonal. A dark Swoosh outlined in white travels from the midfoot to the heel and is the only high-contrast element anywhere on it. Nike sets a cream script NIKE wordmark on the tongue label and repeats it on the heel tab. The last is low and narrow, closer to a flat than to a modern runner, with a collar that stops well below the ankle bone. The outsole is the part worth studying. Instead of the waffle grid Nike reaches for on most of its heritage running revivals, the forefoot carries a dense field of small raised studs in tonal burgundy, which is roughly what a spike plate becomes once the spikes come out. It is the clearest surviving evidence of where the shoe came from, and Nike’s copy never points at it. Nike lists the build as a genuine leather upper over a foam midsole and a rubber outsole, which is a short spec sheet by current standards and the right one for a shoe whose whole argument is that it has almost nothing on it.

Nike has spent two years hearing that its women’s business is where the growth sits and that adidas took that ground with low-profile terrace shoes. Coverage of the Sprint Sister’s return read it as Nike’s answer to the Samba, and the shape supports that reading, because this is a slim leather-and-nylon shoe that sits closer to the ground than anything in Nike’s current running line. What makes it a better answer than another Cortez colorway is that it needs no reframing. It was a women’s shoe in 1979, so Nike can tell this story without the familiar move where a men’s model gets a women’s size run and a new name attached. The risk is that it arrives inside a seasonal drop rather than as its own moment, and shoes that arrive that way get judged against whatever is standing next to them. The counterargument is that a seasonal drop is exactly how a shoe becomes permanent. The models Nike keeps are the ones it can color up four times a year without explaining them again, and the Sprint Sister in its second colorway of 2026 is already behaving like one of those rather than like a one-season archive project.

The Sprint Sister lands at $95, which is under the $110 Gear Patrol reported for the Ridgerock debut and well under the rest of what Nike has dated to October 20. The same day carries the Vomero Premium at $240, the Pegasus Premium at $230, the Vomero Plus at $180 and the Shox Z in patent leather at $140, every one of them in the same Mystic Dates seasonal palette. Against that board the Sprint Sister is the cheapest shoe on the sheet and the only one with an archive behind it, which is a strange way to price a brand’s own history. Nike’s recent archive running revivals have gone out at considerably more.

The Nike Sprint Sister in Mystic Dates, Tough Red and Sail releases October 20 under style code IV5668-600, priced at $95 in women’s sizing. It will be at Nike.com and at retailers carrying Nike’s October women’s range, including Foot Locker. Nike has not announced colorways past the two now in the line, though the Mystic Dates palette runs across enough of the October board to suggest the model is being treated as a line item rather than a one-off.

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The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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