These Olympic athletes want to win. They’re also outfitting their competition.

MILAN — The video Madison Chock posted to social media in 2023 didn’t just show herself and Evan Bates, her husband and ice dancing partner, in costume. It also included the original drawings, drawn by Chock, which served as inspiration.

“I am now available for costume design consultations,” she wrote.

Chock’s design business quickly gained customers – his competitors.

For the past three years leading up to this month’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, Chock has held the dual role of athlete and entrepreneur, both trying to beat his competitors while outfitting many of them. In a sport where presentation counts toward a duet’s score, 10 skaters donned costumes designed by the American star, she said, including ice dance duos from Spain, Australia and Georgia.

“I help my direct competitors with their costumes, and I think that’s a really beautiful thing in our sport,” Chock told NBC News last fall. “What I’m happy to do is share that creativity and help other skaters create something that they feel good in and are excited to wear when they perform. Because I’ve had costumes that I didn’t always feel my best in, and I know how much of a hindrance that can be when you don’t feel your best.”

The story of many performance sportswear brands begins with an athlete. But usually it’s a former athlete. Phil Knight co-founded Nike after finishing his career as a distance runner at the University of Oregon. Gymnasts Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci launched a gymnastics clothing line and gymnastics equipment supplier after already becoming Olympic medalists. TYR, the manufacturer of swimsuits worn by Olympians for decades, was founded by Steve Furniss, a bronze medal swimmer in 1972.

Chock, however, balanced starting a business while still in the prime of his life. And she’s not alone.

American Paralympic athlete Mike Schultz only took up snowboarding after a 2008 accident led to the amputation of his left leg 3 inches above his knee, effectively ending his snowmobile racing career. Once recovered, Schultz was so dissatisfied with competition-ready prosthetic options that he created his own. It proved so popular that he started a company, BioDapt, to make his designs like the Moto Knee, which he estimates is used by 99 percent of paralympians with lower limb amputees.

“Every time I line up at the starting gate,” Schultz said, “I’m lined up against the equipment I built in my workshop not long before.”

They are not the first Olympians to influence the very equipment their sport uses. South Korean short track speed skater Kim Ki-hoon, a gold medalist at the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics, was credited with inventing the glove that skaters wear on their left hands to maintain balance when lightly touching the ice in sharp turns. Kim poured epoxy left over from her skate reinforcement onto the fingertips of a glove, thinking it would reduce friction. He compared it to a thimble that protects the finger from a sewer.

“It looked exactly like frog fingers, which is why they became known as ‘frog gloves,'” he told Olympics.com.

Instead of turning his innovation into a business, Kim became a university professor. Athletes like Schultz and Chock, meanwhile, saw a business opportunity.

Even before his life-changing injury, Schultz loved solving problems and building in his workshop, even making trailers for construction sites. But creating prosthetics, he said, was about more than just the basics.

It gave him a piece of his life back.

A month after his accident, “I broke down and started crying in front of my whole family.” [when] we were watching a highlight reel of the supercross championship,” said Schultz, who was a 10-time X Games gold medalist in motocross, snowmobiling and snowmobiling. “And what hit me the most was thinking that I wasn’t going to be able to chase a championship again, because that’s the goal of my whole life up to that point.”

Schultz said he wasn’t the first Paralympic athlete to influence the equipment athletes use and won’t be the last, because it takes someone very familiar with the limitations of a piece of equipment to tinker with it. He mentioned Zach Williams, an American Paralympic alpine skier who modified the bucket seats used by skiers.

Schultz’s company is large in the adaptive sports field, but remains a small operation, consisting of him and his wife, with a limited line of prosthetic models. There are two knee designs, including one he used to become a Paralympic gold and silver medalist in snowboarding, and three prosthetic feet designed for alpine skiing, recreational activities and high-impact or heavy lifting sports. The knee can cost around $12,000, he said, while another model he wears daily can fetch between $75,000 and $80,000. BioDapt makes between 200 and 300 sales a year, he said, about 90 percent of which come from clinics that serve veterans and athletes alike.

In recent years, Schultz said insurance companies have started to be more willing to cover some secondary prosthetics, but he hopes greater visibility on the Paralympics will increase interest and therefore funding to cover those costs.

“When we can go on mainstream television to showcase that and fly over a mountain, I mean, that’s powerful,” he said.

The cost of adaptive equipment is “the biggest limitation we face” in getting started in adaptive sports, said Noah Elliott, a U.S. snowboarding Paralympian.

Elliott was 15 when a cancer diagnosis led to a complete titanium tibia replacement, from knee to ankle. It was only after he learned to walk again that his body began to reject the metal and developed an infection that led to a complete amputation just above the knee. Still wanting to compete in sports, Elliott called Schultz after his surgery to ask about the price of the Moto Knee, which sparked a friendship. Elliott said Schultz helped customize a silver-colored Moto Knee as a tribute to his old titanium leg.

Elliott’s insurance wouldn’t cover the full cost of his prosthesis, he said, leaving him more than $6,000 to pay out of pocket. But Schultz helped in other ways, Elliott said.

“I remember we were sitting in Finland, it was like my third World Cup, and I was just talking to him, like, ‘How do sponsorships work? Do you sponsor anyone?'” Elliott said. “And he said to me, ‘I’m going to sponsor you.'”

Like Schultz, Chock said his biggest challenge is dividing his time between his fledgling business and a sports career that absorbs almost all of his attention. But his work was praised. A “Dune”-inspired costume designed by Chock and worn by ice dancer Olivia Smart with partner Tim Dieck has been 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 didn’t think I realized at first how much of a responsibility it would be and how responsible I would feel for these outfits,” Chock said. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, sure, I can help you.’ Then I was like, wait, I really want to give it my all and do my best to give them something super special that they’re going to be excited about.

At those Olympics, Chock and Bates won a silver medal in the individual ice dancing final, while wearing a flamenco-inspired costume of his design. They also won gold in the team event for a second consecutive Olympic appearance. Chock said she didn’t feel embarrassed about her designs being in the spotlight in Milan, a fashion capital, but Bates, her husband, said he hoped his wife’s designer talent would be noticed by brands.

“Costumes can be a catalyst for such growth,” he said.

“It changes the way you feel when you walk on the ice,” she said. “How you feel, how you feel perceived by others and when you feel confident, you can take the ice knowing that you are at your best, that you feel your best, and that then allows you to really unleash your best performance.”

Just as it would have been easier to start his business after his retirement from figure skating, it would have been more beneficial for Schultz in competition to keep his design to himself while he competed.

In fact, the thought crossed his mind.

“But honestly, after the first time I saw someone excel with what I had created, it was a completely different mindset and it was very rewarding,” Schultz said. “I was very proud of it and so from that point on it was like the big picture, how can I make us go faster?

“Sometimes it hurts when I get beaten by a few hundredths of a second or something like that to get on the podium. But it softens the blow when I know they’re using my equipment.”