A Richard Mille wristwatch is invariably an ambitious device. Technical innovation is a brand hallmark, be it in terms of exotic materials or movements that take performance to new heights. This sort of boundary-pushing means that the brand has attracted more than a few world-class athletes into their circle of friends and partners—and that means competing at the highest level, including this year’s Olympic Games in Paris. Here are some of those remarkable individuals, and the watches they are associated with.
Rafael Nadal
RM 27-05 Flying Tourbillon Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal is one of the greatest tennis players of all time, with 22 Grand Slam titles under his belt and 209 weeks at the number one spot. This will be the final Olympic Games for the 38-year-old Spaniard, who turned pro in 2001 when he was only 14 years old. A friend of Richard Mille since 2008, the years since have seen a number of highly regarded namesake models. The latest is the RM 27-05 Flying Tourbillon Rafael Nadal, which set new records for shock resistance and lightness for manual winding tourbillon watches.
Mutaz Essa Barshim
RM 67-02 Automatic Extra Flat
A 33-year-old high jump athlete hailing from Qatar, Mutaz Essa Barshim met Richard Mille during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, whereupon the RM 67-02 Automatic Extra Flat was conceived. Designed for lightness and flatness, down to its elastic strap, it has a case made of two high-tech materials—Quartz TPT and Carbon TPT—and is just 7.8mm thick. At 32g, it is also the brand’s lightest automatic watch. Barshim is a part of a rare moment in Olympics history—in 2021, during the COVID-delayed Olympic Games in Tokyo, he and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi tied at a 2.37m jump, and elected to share the gold medal.
Nafissatou Thiam and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce
RM 07-04 Automatic Sport
The 37-year-old Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is considered one of the greatest sprinters of all time—a quality she shares with her countryman, Usain Bolt—with her breakout moment during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, when she became the first Caribbean woman to win the 100m gold. Meanwhile, Nafissatou Thiam is a Belgian heptathlon specialist and, coming into the 2024 Olympic Games, is already a two-time gold medallist—at the age of only 29. Both women are associated with the Richard Mille RM 07-04 Automatic Sport, the brand’s first women’s sports watch. Weighing only 36g, it features the extremely compact and boldly skeletonised CRMA8 calibre, which is shock resistant to 5,000g.
