On Captures Athletic Friendship at the Heart of Olympic Ambition
On's "The Heart to Race" is a 2024 sports documentary short film following the friendship between On Athletics Club runners Hellen Obiri and Sinta Vissa as both athletes prepare for the Paris Summer Olympics 2024, released globally in July 2024 and produced by Park Pictures London.
The film forms the second episode of On's "Dream Together" short-film series, a trilogy of documentaries built around the proposition that shared ambition accelerates individual achievement. Where many sportswear brands anchor Olympic campaigns to individual glory, On makes the relationship between two athletes the entire subject, according to Marketingdive. The first episode, "Beyond Number One," centered on tennis player Iga Swiatek, establishing the series' pattern of pairing an established name with an emerging one and letting their dynamic carry the narrative. "The Heart to Race" deepens that structural idea by grounding it in the daily texture of life at the On Athletics Club in Boulder, Colorado — the production location where Obiri and Vissa first met in 2022.
Obiri arrives in the film as one of the most decorated distance runners in the world, a Kenyan marathoner who relocated to Boulder for the On Athletics Club while separated from her husband and daughter Tanya during her early months with the team. Vissa is a young Italian runner of Ethiopian heritage who had just made the transition from college running to the professional circuit. Their connection, described by Vissa as an immediate click built around cooking together and Kenyan music, gives the film its emotional architecture. The campaign launched in July 2024, according to the Clapboard archive, timed deliberately to the global attention window opened by the Paris Summer Olympics 2024. On, a Swiss sportswear brand headquartered in Zurich, deployed the film globally as a statement of brand identity rather than a conventional product campaign — positioning the Swiss label as a company whose competitive philosophy is rooted in collective ambition rather than solitary excellence, according to Reuters.
On occupies a precise and deliberate position in the global sportswear landscape. The brand held approximately two percent of global value share in sports footwear in 2024, according to Euromonitor International — a figure that makes raw media spend competition with category leaders structurally impossible and creative differentiation strategically essential.
The scale of the market into which On is expanding is significant. The global sportswear market was valued at approximately US$386.8 billion in 2024, up around three percent year over year, according to Research and Markets. Nike held approximately 14.1 percent of global sportswear market share in 2024, down from 15.2 percent the prior year, according to Euromonitor International, while Adidas held approximately 8.9 percent, up from 8.2 percent, according to the same source. Nike's own Paris Summer Olympics 2024 campaign, "Winning Isn't for Everyone," narrated by Willem Dafoe and featuring LeBron James and Serena Williams among others, leaned into the psychology of elite competitiveness, according to Bigblue Co. Adidas activated around individual athletic biography. On chose neither path. Instead, the "Dream Together" series, and "The Heart to Race" in particular, directs attention to the space between athletes — the relational infrastructure that makes elite performance sustainable over time.
This strategic choice connects directly to On's own brand lineage. The brand's 2022 campaign "Run for Each Other," created by AKKURAT Studios and published in Switzerland and the United States, was built around the idea that no runner, however talented, performs better alone. "The Heart to Race" extends that proposition from a general claim into a specific, documented human relationship, giving it narrative weight that a tagline alone cannot carry. In the Swiss home market and across the broader European sportswear conversation, where On has grown rapidly as an aspirational premium alternative to the two dominant American and German incumbents, this emotionally specific storytelling serves both brand-building and competitive positioning functions simultaneously.
"The Heart to Race" was written and directed by J. M. Harper in collaboration with London-based director Hector Aponysus, produced in association with Park Pictures London. The production credits also include Michael Paul Stephenson, who serves as Head of Film and Documentary at On, and director Pierre Robichaud. The presence of an in-house documentary head as a credited creative voice signals how central film has become to On's brand infrastructure — not a commissioned asset but a proprietary content capability.
The cinematography was handled by Natalie Kingston and Joe Meade, whose combined work gives the film its characteristic texture: intimate and unhurried, built from the kind of proximity that takes time to earn with subjects. The footage at the On Athletics Club in Boulder reads as observational rather than staged, with the relationship between Obiri and Vissa rendered through behaviour — cooking, laughter, training — rather than through declarative interview statements alone. Sinta Vissa's recollection of the two athletes making silly faces together sits in the film not as a charming aside but as evidence of the kind of ease that genuine friendship produces, and that no casting brief can manufacture.
Composer Julian Cisneros scored the film, with sound design and mixing handled by Eric Stolberg at Digital One. Colorist George Costakis completed the post-production chain, and the edit was assembled by Sammy Smart. The overall production aesthetic aligns with Park Pictures' broader reputation for documentary work that prioritises emotional honesty over production showmanship. For a Swiss sportswear brand competing in a global Olympic moment dominated by campaigns with vastly larger production budgets, the restraint is a structural advantage: the film asks audiences to feel something before it asks them to notice a logo.
No independently verified performance data — view counts, engagement rates, or conversion metrics — for "The Heart to Race" is publicly available at the time of writing. The Clapboard editorial team assigns the campaign a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100, reflecting strong creative intent and executional craft alongside limitations in measurable commercial amplification for a campaign of its strategic ambition.
The structural effectiveness of the film rests on several verifiable foundations. First, the timing of the July 2024 release, according to the Clapboard archive, positioned On inside the Paris Summer Olympics 2024 conversation at the moment of maximum global sports media attention — without requiring On to purchase official Olympic association rights. Second, the "Dream Together" series format allowed On to aggregate attention across three films rather than concentrate it in a single executional moment, with "The Heart to Race" building on the Iga Swiatek episode and leading toward a subsequent film about Dominic Stricker. This serialised structure creates compounding narrative value that single-execution campaigns do not generate.
Third, the choice of Hellen Obiri as a central subject carried inherent newsworthiness. Obiri is among the most accomplished distance runners of her generation, and her presence in the film meant that athletics media covering the Paris Summer Olympics 2024 had substantive reason to engage with On's content independently of paid distribution. For a Swiss brand holding approximately two percent of global sports footwear value share, according to Euromonitor International, the organic reach potential embedded in that casting decision represents meaningful earned media leverage at a moment when the brand is actively scaling its global presence.
"The Heart to Race" is a 2024 short documentary film by Swiss sportswear brand On, produced by Park Pictures London. It follows the friendship between On Athletics Club runners Hellen Obiri and Sinta Vissa ahead of the Paris Summer Olympics 2024 and forms the second episode of On's Dream Together series, released globally in July 2024.
"The Heart to Race" was directed by J. M. Harper and Hector Aponysus, with additional direction credits held by Michael Paul Stephenson and Pierre Robichaud. Stephenson also serves as On's Head of Film and Documentary. The film was produced in association with Park Pictures London, with cinematography by Natalie Kingston and Joe Meade.
Hellen Obiri is a Kenyan marathon runner and one of the most decorated distance athletes of her generation. Sinta Vissa is a young Italian runner of Ethiopian heritage who transitioned from college to professional running with the On Athletics Club. The two met in Boulder, Colorado in 2022 and developed the friendship documented in the film.
On released "The Heart to Race" in July 2024, timed to align with global attention around the Paris Summer Olympics 2024. Both Obiri and Vissa were preparing for the Games as members of the On Athletics Club, making the film a natural part of On's Olympic moment without requiring official Games sponsorship rights or association.
Dream Together is a trilogy of short documentary films produced by On in association with Park Pictures London. "The Heart to Race" is the second episode, following "Beyond Number One," which centred on tennis player Iga Swiatek. The series explores how shared ambition between athletes drives individual performance, forming a core part of On's 2024 brand storytelling strategy.
"The Heart to Race" received a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative craft and strategic timing relative to the Paris Summer Olympics 2024, alongside limited publicly available performance data. The campaign's serialised format and athlete casting give it structural effectiveness that a single score does not fully capture.
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