When the marathon runners assemble at Heroes’ Square in Budapest next weekend for the start of the 42-kilometre race at the world athletics championships, all will be wearing a variation of shoe that has revolutionised the most elemental of sports, running.Eliud Kipchoge wore an iteration of the Vaporfly shoes when he ran the first sub-two hour marathon in Vienna in 2019.
After Nike introduced their new shoe technology in 2016, their athletes dominated the marathon. Eight of the 12 fastest men’s or women’s marathons in history were run in an 18-month period soon after the shoes were launched. In 2019, Nike athletes occupied 31 of the 36 podium places in the six major marathons.
To qualify for the marathon at next year’s Paris Olympics, male runners will have to meet an entry standard of two hours, eight minutes and 10 seconds for the 42-kilometre race. That’s three minutes and 20 seconds quicker than the entry standard for the Tokyo Games. For women, the entry standard is two minutes, 40 seconds quicker than for Tokyo, at 2:26.50.
“The two main benefits of the new technology shoes are they improve performance – you run faster – but they also aid in recovery, so athletes are able to train more frequently with less risk of injury.” For comparison, there have been stages in the Tour de France where riders change bikes mid-stage because they move from a long flat section to a long hill climb. Riders happily sacrifice a few seconds changing bikes for the minutes potentially gained by the bike more suitable for hills.The obvious parallel to be drawn with other Olympic sports is with the so-called super suits that were outlawed in swimming from 2010.