Eric Sigaki
On CloudNova Z5 and On CloudFlash
With our interviews, we always try to show people who have different relationships with their sneakers. Collectors, enthusiasts, artists, designers, but the relationship an athlete has with their shoes is different from others – they depend on it to perform and they push the shoe to the maximum capacity.
This week we’re going to tell the story of Eric, who was influenced by his father and always had sport present in his life. He spent 25 years of his life in athletics as a professional athlete and participating in many important competitions. Eric always had another passion that carried with him, advertising and audiovisual design. Today he is still involved with the sport, but in a different way – as an advertising designer applying what he learned from sport to his day-to-day work.
Now as an ambassador for On Running, he chose to talk about the first shoe he received from the brand – the CloudFlash, a very specific and technical running shoe. And also a lifestyle adaptation of their performance shoe, the CloudNova Z5.
The interview was photographed at the On Running office in Brasil, by Daniel Sigaki, Eric’s brother. Together they own an amazing sports-focused content production agency called Yaw.
“I’m Eric and I’m 32 years old. I think my whole life has always been closely linked to sports. I had 25 years of professional athletics in my life…I started very young because my father was an athlete. Also, I’ve always liked video and photography a lot due to the influence of my family, especially my mother, she was that person who took the camera everywhere we went. I think it’s a seed that we’ve always carried in the family – sports and video & photography.
This is the first year that I’m working with something other than sports. I’m still in it, but today I also work as a designer for advertising. How crazy is that: sports brought this into my life, and gave me all this creative baggage as well.
The company I work for today promotes and maintains the place where I trained for ten years of my life. There is the largest center for scientific studies and high-performance training in Latin America. In addition, together with my brother Daniel, we are partners in an audiovisual production company, Yaw, which focuses on sport and lifestyle.”
You've always played sports, since you were little, but it was running that made you pursue a career as an athlete. What makes this sport different from others?
eric I did a bit of everything – capoeira, judo, soccer, basketball. But I leaned more to athletics because of my father. I grew up on the track because he always took me to the competitions. So it was natural for me to choose athletics. The only rule at home was that we had to do some sort of sport, no matter what it was.
When I was 14 years old, I was playing basketball and I got the chance to try out for Paulistano sports club; but at the same time I was already competing in athletics. Then I got a spot to compete in the South American athletics championship and I had to choose between the tryouts to join the club and play basketball, or the athletics competition. It was a no brainer for me, so I opted to go to the competition. It was the first time I left the country and I won first place at the Sulamerica championship. Then it became clear that this was what I was supposed to do.
When I was 18, I joined BMF Bovespa, which at the time was the biggest club for athletics. I spent almost ten years there, but when the 2016 Olympics came around, I got injured and couldn’t compete. It was frustrating, and since I wasn’t happy here, I decided to go to the United States. When I arrived, I said “damn, I should have done this a lot younger”. I would have performed more and would have been smarter about training, because they are a lot smarter with sports over there. I stayed in the US for almost five years, I was there just to train, to live out the Olympic dream. I don’t regret any of it.
In the meantime I was able to study, sports always provided these scholarships. When I got back from the US, there was a job opportunity as a designer at a place I had always trained – the NAR (Nucleus of High Performance), which was a Pão de Açúcar initiative. I took the test and that defined my next steps because at the same time, the 2020 Olympic Games were just around the corner. Since the games got delayed because of the pandemic, I decided to make a final decision for this stage of my life “if the games happen, then ok. If they don’t, then I want to work”. With the pandemic I was already doing a lot of freelance design work, and then bigger jobs started to come my way. I wasn’t competing so well anymore, but even so, in the last race of Troféu Brazil I was fighting for a spot in the games, but it didn’t happen. And I ended up passing the NAR test. And then my life changed. Now I work as a designer at the company I competed for ten years.
Sometimes you don’t have to be an Olympic champion, but eventually sports will open a hell of a door for you in your life. That was my gold medal. Many times my life flipped around in 25 years. I came back to the same company, with the same roots, but in a different way. And today I’m happy as hell there.
“Sometimes you don’t have to be an Olympic champion, but eventually sports will open a hell of a door for you in your life. That was my gold medal.”
After experiencing all this, what did you take from sports that you can apply to your life today?
eric It’s funny how sometimes it comes so naturally to me on a daily basis, that I don’t even realize it, but in a corporate setting, it ended up helping me a lot. As an athlete, we are used to pressure, to roles. Besides, I learned a lot from the community aspect that any sport provides, the accountability to help the team. From the outside you may think that athletics is an individual sport, but it’s the most collective sport there is, because I’m only the tip of the iceberg. Behind me come the physiotherapist, trainer, masseuse, sponsorships.
And how were you introduced to this side of graphic design, video and photography. How did that come to you?
eric I’ve always liked to draw, to take photographs. One of these days I was looking at some pictures of myself when I was 14, like actual analog pictures, and I would take the camera to the competitions. Because I had this skill, I wanted to work in advertising. I liked to draw but I wasn’t the guy who would draw something, or the guy who would try to sell it, but I was able to link the two things with design. So after a long time I came to understand that advertising has many different acting areas.
Speaking more about sneakers, how did your relationship with sneakers begin? Was it something that came because of sports or were you already into it?
eric Performance sneakers have always been in my life because of athletics, because of my knowledge of how much each technology could impact my performance. The Olympic Games are known for bringing and defining new technologies. It’s the biggest stage for brands to show what’s the best they got in terms of performance, be it some new technology or an adaptation of something that already exists in a newer model. And brands spend years preparing to launch these innovations during the Olympics. For example, in athletics we wear spikes, and in every Olympic Games there is significant change in materials, in the construction or even the design of the shoes.
As for the everyday sneakers, which are not performance, I always liked them and followed what was happening. Today I understand that my taste for sneakers is not just one thing. It comes from my relationship with the family, and today I see it as an ancestral thing, that goes back a long time. And also, I think my connection with design has made my personal view of things a little more refined, but now speaking more on the performance side, it was the sensitivity on the foot that got me. I like to feel the shoes, to know and understand the structure, and to feel into what I’m stepping on.
“Performance sneakers have always been in my life because of athletics, because of my knowledge of how much each technology could impact my performance. The Olympic Games are known for bringing and defining new technologies. It’s the biggest stage for brands to show what’s the best they got in terms of performance, be it some new technology or an adaptation of something that already exists in a newer model. And brands spend years preparing to launch these innovations during the Olympics.”
Today you are an ambassador for On Running. How did this relationship come about and how do you identify with the brand?
eirc In amateur racing, the brand has to cater to those who want to run, weather they weigh 40kg or 150kg. Sneakers should be universal, and the brands that think that way usually stand out. That’s what caught my attention about On Running. When they called me, it was a very human approach, to understand how much you can add not only to your performance, but also to yourself, your culture, your experience, in what you want to say to the world. And they say that all their products are only a platform, that it will never be performance – because you are the performance.
So, On were opening new spots for their ambassadors. I had to fill out a form and they would get in touch. One day the director here called me and said “Do you have any relationship with other brands?” At the time I didn’t have a contract with anyone, I would only get a few things here and there. He asked “Do you want to come to On?” I said yes right away and he sent me the contract to sign, “Welcome to the family”.
Back then, I was still racing, and it was an amazing experience to have On as my partner on the tracks. The brand had a deep connection not only with the streets, but also with triathlon. If you look at European competitions, there are a lot On Running athletes. The spikes were made exclusively for the brand’s athletes, who also had their own running club. The brand began to gain some traction, and growing demand. They are looking to expand even further. The brand is from 2010 and their first award was sneaker design of the year. The path which the brand is on is impressive.
“That’s what caught my attention about On Running. When they called me, it was a very human approach, to understand how much you can add not only to your performance, but also to yourself, your culture, your experience, in what you want to say to the world.”
And why of all your sneakers did you choose to talk about your On Cloud Z5 and On CloudFlash?
eric I chose On CloudFlash precisely because it was the first one I got from the brand. They gave it to me specifically because I ran track, they always looked from that perspective, what would help my performance. This is On’s most minimalist sneaker, it’s very grounded, like the track spikes – it’s pretty much the same thing but with the spikes here. I liked it a lot. It’s a very technical sneaker and not a simple shoe to wear, not everyone wears it because it’s a shoe that’s very low to the ground. Those who are used to a lot of cushioning won’t like it. To use a sneaker like this, you have to have strong feet and tendons, because it will bounce back.
What happens when you get a sneaker with a high midsole? It has a higher center of gravity, so your foot will hit, compress, and bounce up. When the midsole is lower to the ground, it’s like you’re barefoot – your foot will hit the ground just as it is and then it will bounce back. And it’s made for you to feel that. Since I’ve always had problems with my foot, I understood how much this shoe helped me to strengthen them. It is a very specific and technical shoe for you to run fast. I also think it’s really cool that On makes a point of educating ambassadors very well, because we have to know all these details, for our performance and if anyone asks us too.
As for the On Cloud Z5, I chose it because it’s a casual sneaker, but the whole design was conceptualized on top of CloudFlash.
And now a very technical question. In training, do you prefer a shoe that has more cushioning, do you prefer something closer to the ground, or does it vary?
eric It depends a lot on the day. One day I just want to do some chill running workout, so I use the Monster. I love this shoe because of all the stuff it’s packed with. It’s the big one with a ton of cushioning. It’s the kind of sneaker I wear when I’m not worried about my time. And it’s funny because, a shoe of that height tends to be more unstable, because it has a lot of cushioning and it ends up being very far from the ground, but this one turned out to be so stable because it has what’s called Speedboard plate – it keeps you stable while it absorbs impact and returns energy.
In your opinion, what is On bringing to the running shoe market that's different?
eric There’s a study they did in Switzerland where they say that there’s no way a shoe can correct your step, because, after a while during a race, they saw that 90% of athletes and amateur runners tend to pronate their stride at the end of a race, when they are in a state of fatigue. That’s why On makes all their sneakers for neutral strides.
In addition, On’s shoes are very light, this technology with holes in the midsole takes a lot of weight off the shoe. I think the coolest point of this is, because it’s open, the return of energy is incredible: it absorbs the impact and cushioning returns all that energy. And also since the cushioning is modular, it kind of adapts to how your foot strikes and will rebuild as you step.
On Cloud Z5 e On CloudFlash
Owner: Eric Sigaki
Year: 2020 e 2021
Photos: Daniel Sigaki
