Nike’s sneaky record-breaking shoes ‘like doping’ – The Australian

Athletes of all shapes, sizes, ages and abilities had been seduced by Nike’s clever marketing spiel, spending $320 on a pair of these sneaky sneakers with their concealed carbon plates that make even joggers feel like they are “running on trampolines”.

Many now blame that Vaporfly shoe for ruining track and field. They have forced World Athletics to consider rule changes due to be unveiled on Friday because their impact on performance is being likened to mechanical doping.

“Measured in the lab, verified with medals and records,” it says on the side of a midsole constructed from a material initially designed to propel tennis and golf balls but also now propelling ­humans at remarkable speed.

Sport is measured in tiny fractions — the “one-percenters” mentioned by sports coaches — but Nike claims its shoes offer a 4 per cent energy saving thanks to a compound Nike calls ZoomX foam.

It is made from a high-tech polymer called Pebax, which first appeared in sport in the 1970s in the strings for tennis racquets. Premium golf balls are constructed from a material that, when put in a running shoe, manages to protect and propel like a spring.

Nick Symmonds, a former Olympic middle-­distance runner who performed a treadmill experiment in a pair of the latest Vaporfly Next% shoes before taking a scalpel to them, said it was a combination of the foam and the stiff carbon plate that runs the full length of the shoe that creates the trampoline effect.

The race in Chicago provided a perfect illustration of Nike’s ubiquitous influence. Now its science has allowed a woman to slash 81 seconds off Paula Radcliffe’s longstanding world-best marathon mark.

The Alphafly shoe worn by Eliud Kipchoge to run his sub-two-hour marathon was an extreme version of the Vaporfly — an even deeper midsole is said to accommodate three carbon plates — and will almost certainly be banned.

As will the shoe that Kosgei wore, if the suspicions of World Athletics officials are confirmed and her trainers were a modified version of the Next%.

The regulations state that a shoe must not provide “an unfair ­advantage” although Kosgei’s ­record is expected to stand. Nike’s new track spikes are at the prototype stage but are also likely to be outlawed. For some, however, any rule change that stops short of a blanket ban will not be enough.

Rochelle Rodgers competed for Australia in the women’s marathon at the Doha World Championships last year and said she considered the shoe necessary to be competitive.

“Everyone who was running at a high level had them on their feet. In one race there was a starting line full of red Vaporfly shoes and I started wondering ‘What’s going on?’” Rodgers said.

“I wore them (Vaporfly 4%) for the first time in a race last year and we worked out I ran 4 per cent quicker than I hoped, which is what Nike claims the shoe will deliver. From that moment I knew it was the right shoe for me. Now I have three pairs,” she said.

The Vaporfly range typically cost about $320 a pair and last only one 42km race.

Rodgers, 32, is heading to Japan this weekend to compete in the Beppu marathon, where she hopes to run a Tokyo Olympic qualifying time.

For Nike’s rival manufacturers, the situation is a nightmare, when the clock is counting down towards Tokyo.

“We will welcome the introduction of new ­parameters,” said a senior executive at one sports brand. “Track and field needs to bring in the kind of rules that we saw introduced in other sports, like swimming. But it has taken too long to get to this point, and it makes it very difficult for designers to produce a new shoe in time for the Olympics in Tokyo. That means Nike athletes could still have an advantage.”

Any attempt to imitate Nike’s designs is a complicated business, given how heavily patented the Vaporfly shoes are. The Vaporfly foam is produced by a firm in Britain and is available only to Nike and Reebok.

Other brands have tried to purchase it and failed.

The top American woman marathon runner last year was Sara Hall, who runs in Asics shoes. Her husband, Ryan Hall, another elite runner, reacted to Kipchoge breaking the two-hour marathon barrier in the Alphafly with a blunt appraisal. “It is no longer a shoe, it’s a spring,” he said of a shoe that also boasts a 51mm stacked heel.

When The Times broke the news this month that the most advanced versions of Nike’s Vaporfly shoes might be banned, Asics’ shares rose by 7 per cent.

British runner Pavey knows people at her athletics club in Exeter, southwest England, who say Nike has helped them scythe huge chunks off their personal bests. “I don’t know what was going on in the head of World Athletics,” Pavey said. “Why was this left unchecked?”

The counter-argument is you can’t stop progress and the horse has bolted. Mary Wittenberg, who spent years as the director of the New York Marathon, said: “If these shoes are as good as we think, there will have to be asterisks and BV and AV marks in the record books — before Vaporfly and After Vaporfly.”

One man watching with interest is Kyle Barnes, assistant professor of movement science at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. In 2018, he did research on runners and the Nike Vaporfly 4% and found Nike had undersold its shoe. It actually gave the runner a 4.2 per cent energy ­efficiency advantage.

“Any shoe has to be readily available for all but that’s not happening, and it’s not happened for years,” he said.

Gianni Demadonna, the Italian former marathon champion who manages some of the biggest names in distance running, pointed out last year a subtle change to the wording of the regulations that appeared to accommodate Nike’s new designs. Before June 2018, the rules stated that shoes must not give unfair additional ­assistance, “including by the incorporation of any technology”. That line has now gone.

The repercussions are being felt around the world. Last week, an unheralded athlete called Derara Hurisa was a late addition to the Mumbai Marathon field. The Ethiopian normally runs in Adidas shoes but said he had lost them when travelling from Addis Ababa and so had to borrow a pair of Vaporflys from a friend. He won in a course record.

Now the athletics world has a decision to make about the pink shoes on millions of club runners’ wish lists.

The Times

Additional reporting: Simon Orchard