Super Shoes NEED to be banned

Nonsense. Poor kids who want to "enter" track don't need super spikes. Neither do rich kids.

If a freshman boy runs a mile in 4:52 instead of 4:50, so what? As long as they are exercising and having fun it's all good.

These posts are always made by people who are past there PR prime and they are salty that they don't get a chance to set PR's in the new shoes.

1) I don't know how you "ban the shoes," people obsess about the carbon plate as many have said the dragonfly don't even have a carbon plate!

2) Not only are the shoes faster for racing but they really help you recover and prevent injuries. To ban them would literally be declaring that we want more runners to get injured more often.... nah I'm good a) I don't like being injured b) I don't like my favorite elites being injured.

3) WA has set standards on stack height and the # of plates (although no one seems to actually know if two plates would be better than one) we can quibble about whether they should have been slightly tighter but that is just nibbling around the edges. Let the companies innovate within these parameters is the fairest outcome.

You may have a point when it comes to the road racing shoes... but if we are talking about kids we are talking about spikes. The dragonfly cost $150, and if you only use them for races you can probably get two years out of them?

1) those swimsuits were far more expensive and lasted far less time.

2) the investment in spikes will remain far lower than the investment in trainers to become even a pretty good high school runner.

Running has been and remains the sport with among the lowest financial barriers to entry

The dragonflies everyone is wearing to run fast are not a carbon plated shoe they are just the zoom X foam with plastic. They are not spring loaded. Seems that the main benefit is from the foam. Are you going to ban different types of foam? More of an argument for the road shoes which make a far bigger difference but even with them the main benefit is ability to train harder and recovery better due to the foam. You would have to ban types of foam if you want to stop supershoes and they will just invent new foams if they need to. Can't really see what they can do for track except reduce the stack height allowed further.

Like F1, world athletics needs to pit manufacturers against each other.

Here's how: Announce regulations 2 years out. For example, from '25-'27, max stack height is 22mm. Carbon is banned. 1 piece propulsion plates are banned. Max weight limit is 6.5 oz.

Manufactures have that amount of time to get a shoe out that matches it. Go wild with alternative materials, plates, etc. Athletes can ONLY race in that year's shoe. Shoes are inspected before and after each race.

We'll see some incredible tech advancements, some duds, and from a tech viewpoint, the sport will be a lot more fun to follow.

Imagine if Hoka cracks the code and creates a shoe that wrecks the Nike athletes the first half of the season, for example.

Exactly! Look at all the kids from poor neighborhoods winning all the swimming championships since the ban. Or on the other hand, try to make a point that makes sense for once.

Agreed. While we’re at it, we should also ban sports drinks, all-weather track surfaces, synthetic apparel materials, and any knowledge of nutrition or exercise physiology that post-dates the Second World War.

Look, technology changes. The notion that super shoes somehow corrupts the purity of the sport is based on knee-jerk reaction or poorly thought-through ideology. Running times have never been a mark of pure physical “ability.” Any performance is a function of an individual’s physical attributes, their training, their diet, how their bodies are feeling on the day, and a host of “environmental” factors that include weather, footwear, running surface, etc. All of these things help to constitute a performance. A mile time is the outcome of a heterogeneity of forces. It’s probably best just to accept that reality and banish the thought that break-through technologies ruin the purity of the sport.

Or, to take up the argument a bit differently: super shoes do a better job of returning energy. They don’t introduce energy to the system, they just help to conserve a bit that would otherwise be lost. How is that different than evolving track surfaces?

Yeah it's crazy how many people beat me in races now they wear super shoes but never could before.

They don't work for me as a minimalist runner.

2019 Called and want their topic back

You don't hear other sports complaining about modern equipment. Tennis is a different sport with a wooden racket. Snow skies were first made of wood. Once technology has advanced there is no turning back. Football long ago did away with the leather helmet.

People didn't show up to Pre because they didn't want to see that much speed? Riiiiight.

People didn't show up to Pre because it is a pain in the ass to get to Eugene and stay for a couple of days and much of the meet was available on free TV.

Banning super shoes is impractical. Shoe technology evolves with each decade and it needs to be unbraced. There are still just 4 HS boys that have broken four out of thousands this season. Sub four in HS is still very very rare. even with the super shoes there are still only a handful of US sub 2:10 marathoners. The standards for NCAAs, USAs, the marathon trials, Worlds, etc. will keep getting faster so proportionally the same number of athletes will qualify as previous eras.

I don’t think anyone will argue that Jim Ryun’s sub 4 minute miles on cinder tracks in leather spikes is more impressive than what a sub 4 is today. bill Rodgers 2:08 in zero drop thinly cushioned ASICS shoes will always be more impressive than any 2:08 guy in super shoes.

If you feel so strongly that T&F is a clown show, why do you bother with it? You like circuses that much? If I felt the same like you, I would have moved on to some other activity.

Fixed some typos

Cool story. PEDs help you recover too. They’re also great for running fast. Throw in some spring-loaded dragonfly’s and you’ve got quite the clown set-up. Set PRs and look ridiculous all at the same time!

Times/records no longer have any meaning. Winning titles needs to be the only benchmark from here on out. Unless someone works out a non-supershoe translator we can't really compare Ryan to today's crop of hs miles etc..

Except PEDs are banned and have serious health impacts. Super shoes aren't, and don't.

It super shoes are so effective, why haven’t elite times changed? Only college and HS.

R. Harrison ran 4:01 2 years ago without super shoes and now 3:59 this year with him. Did he actually get slower?