MILAN – The video Madison Chock posted on social media in 2023 did not show her and Evan Bates, her husband and ice dancing partner, in costume. It also featured original designs, drawn by Chock, that served as their inspiration.
“I am now available for clothing consultation,” she wrote.
Chock’s design business soon won customers – his competitors.
In the past three years leading up to this month’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, Chock has juggled two roles as athlete and businessman, simultaneously trying to beat his competition while equipping many of them. In a game where presentation is key to the couple’s outcome, 10 skaters wore costumes designed by the American star, he said, including ice dancing pairs from Spain, Australia and Georgia.
“I’m helping my direct competition with their costumes, and I think that’s a really good thing for our game,” Chock told NBC News last fall. “What I enjoy doing is sharing that art and helping other skaters do something they feel good about and enjoy wearing when they perform. Because I’ve had a costume that I didn’t feel good about all the time, and I know how much of a hindrance it can be if you don’t feel good.”
Many sportswear brand origin stories begin with an athlete. However, it is usually a former athlete. Phil Knight founded Nike after finishing his career as a track runner at the University of Oregon. Gymnasts Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci started a line of gymnastics clothing and exercise equipment suppliers after becoming Olympic medalists. TYR, a manufacturer of swimwear worn by Olympians for decades, was founded by Steve Furniss, a 1972 bronze medalist swimmer.
Chock, however, has weighed in on building a business while remaining competitive. And he is not alone.
American Paralympian Mike Schultz only got into skiing after a 2008 accident that resulted in his left leg being amputated 3 inches above the knee, ending his snowmobile racing career. When he recovered, Schultz was so dissatisfied with the options for competitive prosthetics that he created his own. It proved so popular that he started a business, BioDapt, to make his designs such as the Moto Knee, which he estimates is used by 99% of lower limb Paralympians.
“Whenever I line up at the first gate,” Schultz says, “I’m lined up against stuff that I built in my shop not too long ago.”
Olympians are not the first to influence the very equipment they use in sports. South Korean short track speed skater Kim Ki-hoon, a gold medalist at the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics, is credited with inventing the gloves that left-handed skaters wear to maintain balance when lightly touching the ice on tight corners. Kim poured the epoxy left over from reinforcing her skirts into the fingers of the glove with the intention that it would reduce friction. He likened it to the finger guard of the sewer pipe.
“It looked like the fingers of a frog, so it was known as ‘leftover gloves,'” he told Olympics.com.
Instead of turning his talent into a business, however, Kim became a university professor. Athletes like Schultz and Chock, on the other hand, saw a business opportunity.
Even before his life-changing injury, Schultz loved solving problems and building in his shop, even building trailers for construction sites. But creating prosthetics, he said, was more than a primary goal.
It gave him back a piece of his life.
A month after the crash, “I literally fainted and started crying in front of my whole family [when] we were watching a movie highlighting supercross championships,” said Schultz, a 10-time X Games gold medalist in motocross, snowmobile and snowmobile. “And the hardest part was thinking that I wouldn’t be able to chase championships again, because that’s what my whole life was about leading up to that point.”
Schultz said he was not the first Paralympic athlete to influence the way athletes use equipment and he will not be the last because it takes someone who knows a piece of equipment well to be able to test it. He pointed to Zach Williams, a US Paralympic Alpine skier who has developed bucket seats used by skiers.
Schultz’s business is a big deal in adaptive sports but remains a small operation, involving him and his wife, who have a limited line of prosthetic models. There are two models of knees, including one he used to become a gold and silver medalist for the disabled in snowboarding, and three prosthetic feet designed for downhill skiing, recreational activities and high-impact sports or heavy lifting. A knee can cost about $12,000, he said, while another model he wears every day can fetch $75,000 to $80,000. BioDapt does 200 to 300 sales a year, he said, with about 90% of the business coming from clinics that serve veterans such as athletes.
In recent years, Schultz said that insurance companies have begun to increase their willingness to cover some secondary prosthetics, but he hopes that more exposure to the Paralympics will increase interest and thus funds to cover such costs.
“If we can be on regular TV showing this and fly down the mountain, I mean that’s powerful,” he said.
The cost of adaptive equipment is “the biggest barrier we face” to taking up adaptive sports, said Noah Elliott, a US snowboarder.
Elliott was 15 when a cancer diagnosis led to a total replacement of his tibia, from the knee down to the ankle. It was after he learned to walk that his body began to reject the metal and he developed an illness that led to a total amputation above the knee. Still looking to compete in the sport, Elliott called Schultz after his surgery to ask about the price of Moto Knee, which began a friendship. Elliott said Schultz helped customize the silver-colored Moto Knee as a tribute to his former titanium leg.
Elliott’s insurance wouldn’t cover the full cost of his transplant, he said, leaving him with more than $6,000 out of pocket. But Schultz helped in other ways, Elliott said.
“I remember we were sitting in Finland, it was like the third World Cup, and I was just talking to him, like, ‘How does sponsorship work? Are you sponsoring anybody?'” Elliott said. “And he’s like, ‘I’ll sponsor you.'”
Like Schultz, Chock said his biggest challenge is dividing his time between his fledgling business and an athletic career that takes up almost all of his focus. But his work has gained fame. The “Dune” inspired costume designed by Chock and worn by ice dancer Olivia Smart and partner Tim Dieck was named best costume by the International Skating Union. Dieck’s costume was designed by Mathieu Caron, a designer with whom Chock often works closely.
“I thought, I thought, at first how much of a burden it would be or how much of a burden I would feel with these items,” Chock said. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, sure, I can help you.’ Then I said, wait, I want to do all this and do my best to give them something special that they will really enjoy. “
At these Olympics, Chock and Bates won a silver medal in the ice dance final, while wearing a flamenco-inspired costume of her own design. They also won gold as part of the team event for the second consecutive Olympics. Chock said she doesn’t feel inferior that her designs are under the spotlight in Milan, the fashion capital, but Bates, her husband, said he hopes his wife’s design talent will be recognized by brands.
“The wearing of clothes can be the cause of such growth,” he said.
“It changes the way you feel when you step on the snow,” he said. “The way you feel about yourself, how you feel that others see you, and when you feel confident, you can take the snow knowing that you look your best, you feel your best, and then it allows you to really release your best performance.”
Just as it would have been easier to start her own business after retiring from figure skating, it would have been more competitive for Schultz to keep her design to herself while competing.
That thought actually occurred to him.
“But to be honest, after the first time I saw someone succeed with what I created, it was a completely different mindset, and it was a lot of fun,” Schultz said. “I was really proud of it so, from that point on, it was like the big picture, like, how can I get all of us going faster?
“Sometimes it hurts when I’m beaten by a few hundredths of a second or something to be on the podium. But it helps when I know they’re using my equipment.”
