In Olympic sports, the difference between success or failure is measured in moments. Who crosses the line first, who catches the ball better, who jumps higher, or farther or faster, can define a career. So it’s no surprise that elite athletes long have been obsessed with optimizing their performance. Training, nutrition, recovery, and equipment all have become finely tuned systems, each designed to squeeze out the smallest possible edge.
In bobsled, that obsession especially is visible. The sport’s meticulously engineered sleds often get much of the credit alongside the athletes who push them. Aerodynamics, runner polish, and sled geometry endlessly are analyzed. But in bobsled, a race often is decided in the first few seconds, when athletes explode off the ice and push with everything they have.
Those opening steps are where a quieter form of innovation has been taking shape, found not in the sled, but inside the shoe.
VKTRY Gear recently renewed its partnership with USA Bobsled & Skeleton as the team builds toward the 2026 Winter Olympics. With custom carbon fiber insoles, this tech provides one more mode of optimization aimed at helping athletes perfect their output. The collaboration traces its roots back more than a decade, to a moment when bobsled offered VKRTY Gear founder, Matt Arciuolo, both an unlikely proving ground and a technical challenge.
“I come from a fourth-generation shoe family,” Arciuolo said. His great-grandfather hand-made shoes in Italy before immigrating to the United States in 1921, eventually opening what is now the oldest shoe store in Connecticut. Arciuolo himself became a certified pedorthist in the early 2000s, specializing in custom shoes, orthotics, and brace work — particularly for people with disabilities.
That work sparked a question that would shape VKTRY Gear’s future.
“Normal insoles are passive devices,” Arciuolo said. “They absorb shock and support, but they don’t give anything back.” While designing orthotics to help individuals with mobility challenges to increase propulsion, he began to wonder why similar concepts couldn’t apply to able-bodied athletes.
By the late 2000s, advances in woven carbon fiber made it possible to create an insole that could bend under load, store energy, and return it during push-off. VKTRY Gear patented what it calls a “dynamic insole,” contoured so when it's placed on a flat surface, it touches only at the heel and toe. As an athlete loads the foot, the plate flexes and rebounds.
“The more effort an athlete puts into it, the more it gives back,” Arciuolo said. “This is their connection to the ground – probably one of the most important interactions that an athlete can have.”
Bobsled articularly was a tough testing ground. “No other sport relies on the first 13 to 20 steps like bobsled,” he said. “And I had to prove it on ice.”
For Kaillie Humphries, a four-time Olympic medalist and one of the most decorated drivers in the sport’s history, those steps are everything. “The only time that we get to accelerate the sled is with our own bodies in the first 50 meters,” she said. “Every single step and every hundredth [of a second] that you can develop will equate to time and speed at the bottom of the track.”
The insoles initially were a secret, helping to propel Team USA to their first four-man bobsled title in 62 years at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. Humphries first encountered VKTRY Insoles around 2019, shortly after joining Team USA, but didn’t begin using them until returning to competition postpartum.
“Postpartum, I really struggled with stiffness,” she said. “I was hitting good positions, but there was just no return. I was working super hard, but there was nothing helping me actually go forward.”
She described her body as feeling “like a sponge,” absorbing force rather than redirecting it. The insoles, she said, helped provide a level of stiffness and energy return that her body wasn’t yet supplying on its own.
“They helped early on to provide that stiffness,” Humphries said. “And now that my body’s naturally getting back to work, it can not only be at performance level, but then elevate to something even greater.”
She uses them in training shoes, while she's going about her daily routine and bobsled shoes, noting that the benefits start before competition even begins. “Just in my warm-up, I feel powerful,” she said.
The margins in bobsled are unforgiving. Humphries won a World Cup race earlier this season by one hundredth of a second. “When I look at where hundredths come from – this is the type of thing they come from,” she said.
That reality shapes how athletes think about technology. “I want to stand on that start line at the Olympics knowing I’ve done everything possible,” Humphries said. “So there’s no reason why I can’t go out and be the best in the world.”
Bobsled always has been a sport comfortable with innovation, but also constrained by safety and regulation. Sled design tightly is governed, as sliding athletes have increased to unsafe speeds on tracks built decades ago. Footwear, however, has remained comparatively static — particularly bobsled spikes, which now are difficult to source at all.
“There’s a huge gap in the performance industry when it comes to insoles,” Humphries said. “People think of them as comfort, or arch support. They don’t put two and two together.”
Arciuolo sees that skepticism as familiar. “Every time something new comes up, the naysayers say it’s an unfair advantage,” he said, pointing to historic pushback against innovations like waffle-soled track shoes and carbon-plated running footwear. “Now carbon fiber in shoes is ubiquitous.”
The tough testing ground that bobsled offered VKTRY Gear, Arciuolo said, turned into a blessing. The shoes are among the tightest in sport, leaving almost no room for added material. Designing an insole that fit — and worked — under those constraints made expansion into other sports easier, and they now work with multiple sporting leagues from the high school to the elite levels.
“We’re excited to continue our relationship with VKTRY, a company whose innovation has historically had a direct impact on the performance of our athletes. Aron McGuire, CEO of USA Bobsled & Skeleton said. "Having partners who understand the demands of our sport is invaluable as we prepare for the upcoming season and look ahead toward international competition.”
For Humphries, the partnership reflects something deeper than equipment. “You want a good team behind you, supporting you, believing in that same dream,” she said. “That allows me to focus on driving, knowing the performance pieces are there.”
Neither Humphries nor Arciuolo see a ceiling on performance technology. “It takes people like Matt who say, ‘Wait, I can make this better,’” Humphries said. “It took people pushing that envelope, to raise the bar to where it is today. But do I think it can be raised further? 100%. And do I think it will over the next 10 years? I have no doubt.”