2020 · Home

At Sporting, football is the shop window, but athletics is the vault. No section of the club has filled more shelves: it was with the lion on his chest that Carlos Lopes ran the Los Angeles marathon in 1984 and brought home Portugal's first ever Olympic gold, that Francis Obikwelu flew to 100 metres silver in Athens 2004, and that generation after generation the club dominated European club cross country. This 2020 running vest belongs to that universe: racerback cut, light competition mesh, Agriloja repeated on the chest and sides, the working uniform of the club's athletes in a year when the world stopped and the Tokyo Games were left hanging. When they were finally run, in 2021, Patrícia Mamona jumped to Olympic silver in the triple jump with Sporting on her résumé. Alongside the football shirts, this piece is a reminder of what the club's own name says and is sometimes forgotten: Sporting was never just football. An eclectic club, summed up in a shirt with no number and no name, made for running.

Here at Hoopster athletics comes in through the front door: the vest of the section that gave the lion its greatest glories, heir to Carlos Lopes and Obikwelu. Not all hoops chase a ball, and some of them ran for gold.