When TED Talks reached out to Alvina Chen, Founder and CEO of Feldspar, with an invitation to speak at the inaugural TEDSports event in Indianapolis, it was a defining moment for our team.  To be invited onto a main-stage TED event because they recognised the power of her idea — and its potential to transform sport from the ground up — was both humbling and electrifying.

TED, the global non-profit organisation that believes powerful ideas spark conversations and drive meaningful change, has long been a home for ideas that have shaped the future. Alvina’s talk earned its place there by asking a deceptively simple question: while innovation in sport has transformed shoes, wearables, training methods, and data analysis, why has the surface athletes run on remained fundamentally unchanged for more than half a century?

In her TED Talk, Alvina shares how this question emerged from personal adversity. A former competitive runner, she was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis — a rare autoimmune disease that forced her to relearn how to walk. Unable to train the way she once had, she began rethinking fatigue, energy return, and how technology could better support the human body.

That thinking became Feldspar’s mission: to reinvent sport surfaces with higher energy return features and embedded sensors that capture granular real-time performance data — to amplify what the human body is already capable of and share this with athletes, coaches, fans, and broadcasters.

On the TED stage, Alvina connects Feldspar’s innovation to a bigger idea: technology has always played a quiet role in pushing human limits. The next breakthrough, she argues, will come from the ground beneath our feet. The next breakthrough, she argues, will come from the ground beneath our feet — across running tracks, boxing rings, and tennis courts — reshaping how sport is performed, measured, and experienced.

Watch Alvina’s TED Talk HERE and see how one radical idea may shape the future of sport, from the ground up.