Katir had to send his ASIC shoes for controle as well as testing his blood (after the end race of Liévin).
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The price of breaking a world athletics record? Gutted slippersMo Katir had to hand over the Asics with which he achieved the European record of 3,000m on Wednesday to the international federation so that an expert can tear them and verify that they have no trick
The physiological doping control was completed routinely, so many have already passed in his life as a record man(he holds four Spanish records, 1,500m, 5,000m and 3,000m outdoors, apart from the European 3,000m on the indoor track); The technological one left him more surprised and saddened, especially when the official who picked up the white Asics Metaspeed MD, an approved prototype, with which he had run after Girma and the record told him to say goodbye to them, that he would not see them again , because they would be sent to an independent expert who would slit them to see if their old one conformed to the regulations and had what the manufacturer said they had. The same fate will condemn the Nike Dev that Girmay used. It is what the regulations say, they explained: whenever there is a world record, before homologating it, you have to check the footwear. Katir's situation was ambiguous: although he was not the new record holderworld record, actually he had broken the previous world record, so they were required to examine them.
Aguado regrets a situation caused by the fear of technological doping whose door was opened, under pressure from the big manufacturers, by World Athletics itself (WA, the international federation chaired by Sebastian Coe) when it admitted in its regulations a sacrilegious notion before, that the shoes could help performance, and not just protect your feet. “At that point,” explains Aguado, “where do you put the limit? how do you control?
The measure means not only that the athlete cannot use shoes worth more than 300 euros again, but also that he loses the memory of a great night, of a record, that perhaps he would like to keep in a showcase or donate to a sports museum. for fans to fantasize.
"That's how it is," says Xavier Aguado, a professor of biomechanics at the University of Castilla-La Mancha who in his laboratories rips up used slippers for his students to see what they are hiding. "But gutting them is necessary because there may be hidden radiolucent elements that cannot be seen on a scanner."
The first WA regulation specified that athletes should wear shoes accessible to all, that everyone, and not just the big names sponsored by manufacturers, could buy them in a store or via the web. Shortly after they added an exception: some athletes have the right to use prototypes provided by the manufacturer only to them for all competitions excluding World Cups and Olympic Games and only for one year.
Most brands are developing prototypes for the Paris Games, including On, Mario García Romo's shoes and club, which a week ago broke the Spanish record for the mile on the indoor track in New York (3m 51, 79s). “Technology is helping recovery a lot, it helps a lot to improve times. People talk about the shoes, but the only thing they do is improve your efficiency, you are able to use all the energy you produce to go faster, the heat doesn't just dissipate”, explains the athlete from Salamanca. “The people at On have already made great shoes, and now we are using prototypes for 2024.”
García Romo will be able to verify his effectiveness and efficiency again at the Madrid meeting next Wednesday, where he will assault the national record of the 1,500m (the 3m 33.32s of Andrés Díaz in 1999), and surely he would not mind beating the world distance record, the 3m 30.60s of Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who has announced his resignation from running in Madrid, even at the risk of his brilliant On Cloudspike Dev, nails in the clouds of Swiss technology, ending up disemboweled in a laboratory.