Illegal shoes plus pacers will get her close and they wouldn't do it otherwise. They have already done the calculations. It's obvious that it involves special shoes: it's being held by a shoe company.
If you read this paper you will see that the calculations and impact of “drafting effectiveness” are based on remarkably scant experimental data, none it seems on actual humans running on a track.
Perhaps it still was part of what influenced Nike's decision to go for it. I believe some of the authors have done research for Nike on their supershoes.
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Would love to see her paced/surrounded by Nike superstars. Have Jakob lead and Kipchoge run behind her. Can Kipchoge break 4? Maybe not. That’s an interesting question, Kipchoge v Faith at 1500. Who wins today??
A better question is whether any woman will ever break 4:00 for the mile. I doubt it, not at least without Kratochvilova-level doping. Like Rojo said, you need 1:53 speed at the slowest and it seems like every woman who can get that fast doesn't have much 1500m strength. Maybe if you took an Athing Mu level talent and had her training like a pro runner at age 14 like Jakob. But even that seems a bit of a reach.
I mean it's like asking whether a man could ever run 3:19.9 for the 1500m.
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It’s all in the marketing and that round number of 4:00.
She will likely run 4:05-4:10 on the day….but this will pull more mainstream eyeballs than Grand Slam Track and Diamond League combined!
She'll run faster than that. It's not going to be a normal looking race. It won't be record eligible.
People need to get the visual out of their head of when she ran 4:07, the final two laps on her own. It won't look like that at all. Kipyegon will have at least two male pacers in front of her and at least two male pacers behind her.
Think of a velodrome time trial or the team pursuit in speed skating. Everything will be based on aerodynamics. The United States speed skating totally revolutionized the team pursuit a few years ago. Instead of skaters peeling off and taking turns at the front, a scientist from outside the sport told them it was faster to remain in a straight line throughout, with each skater pushing each other in the back.
That's what the Kipyegon attempt will look like, minus the pushing. This video on the American men speed skating breakthrough demonstrates the concept, side by side with a superstar Dutch team using the old method:
These events actually damage the credibility of running sports.
I tend to agree. It's easy to think of idiotic technological interventions that could get Kipyegon to 4:00. You could follow her in a car with a gigantic fan blowing 50 MPH on her back. You could hook her to a small helium filled blimp so she weighed 40 lbs. Hell, you could strap some Wile E Coyote rocket powered roller skates on her. All would obviously make the "achievement" of breaking a "barrier" meaningless. Shoe tech also makes chasing "barriers" meaningless. The 4:00 mile is no longer a significant milestone for a young male runner. For me, the sub-2:00 was interesting at the time because I didn't understand that the shoes really could take a couple minutes off a marathon. It was kind of interesting to think that perfect pacing and a perfect course could get a great athlete so far below the legit record. Turns out it was mostly the shoe tech. A lot less interesting. If Kipyegon gets anywhere close to 4:00 it will just signal another quantum jump in shoe tech. Ho hum. Bad for the sport.
I’m assuming there’ll be male pacers so Nike can just have them run the full mile with her. I’m guessing they’ll recruit some big names. Kipchoge’s pacer group for INEOS was practically a who’s who of legends. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ingebrigtsen, Fisher, or Hocker in there for some extra star power.
But for such a short race, and at such a slow (comparatively) pace for women vs men, you don't need hard hitters at all. Basically any pro male pacer can do the job. And you probably want a pro pacer rather than a pro racer since the pacer will ideally know more about the finer details.
For the Sub 2, they needed a ton of the upper tier of middle distance runners to be able to hold the needed pace for the needed time otherwise they would have needed to do more swaps sooner.
Yeah, you don't need a star but it would be good for publicity. Nike could advertise something like "this woman is so good we got a men's Olympic champion to be her pacer" or "paced by a 5x world record holder."
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But for such a short race, and at such a slow (comparatively) pace for women vs men, you don't need hard hitters at all. Basically any pro male pacer can do the job. And you probably want a pro pacer rather than a pro racer since the pacer will ideally know more about the finer details.
For the Sub 2, they needed a ton of the upper tier of middle distance runners to be able to hold the needed pace for the needed time otherwise they would have needed to do more swaps sooner.
Yeah, you don't need a star but it would be good for publicity. Nike could advertise something like "this woman is so good we got a men's Olympic champion to be her pacer" or "paced by a 5x world record holder."
So Nike have said they will help her?
It must be a new shoe along with the pacers and wind shielding.
I wonder if she's done it already on a treadmill or some other indictor workout, and they are confident she has a chance.
I’m a huge fan of Faith’s but there is absolutely no way this works. Perfect pacing and drafting don’t let you drop over 7 seconds from your world record PR. I’m predicting 4:03.9.
What do you call a person who constantly wishes that other people fail to achieve their corrupt and perverted goals? Sadist? No!!
It’s called LOVE!!
I want Faith to fail, I don’t even want her to succeed faster than 4:07. I don’t want to see nor know any of such non sense!!
I’m a man of moral and ethical refinement! I see and hear and know only the praiseworthy things!!!!
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He may be old but he's one of the most talented runners of all time. He won the World Champs as an 18 year old against two of the greatest runners ever.
Give him a couple weeks to sharpen up and put him in Dragonflies and he'd break 3:55.
Yeah, you don't need a star but it would be good for publicity. Nike could advertise something like "this woman is so good we got a men's Olympic champion to be her pacer" or "paced by a 5x world record holder."
So Nike have said they will help her?
It must be a new shoe along with the pacers and wind shielding.
I wonder if she's done it already on a treadmill or some other indictor workout, and they are confident she has a chance.
I don’t want.
I don’t want.
Full stop!!
This is not the sport I once knew. This is not the feeling of love ❤️ I once felt!!
I’m a Physicist founded in and of LOVE!!
I need LOVE ❤️ and I want to see true LOVE.
Faith Kipyegon is a fake artist, she doesn’t come in the name of LOVE 💕!!
He may be old but he's one of the most talented runners of all time. He won the World Champs as an 18 year old against two of the greatest runners ever.
Give him a couple weeks to sharpen up and put him in Dragonflies and he'd break 3:55.
I'd pay money to watch that.
Seriously bruh? You are messed up!! Away from me!!
A better question is whether any woman will ever break 4:00 for the mile. I doubt it, not at least without Kratochvilova-level doping. Like Rojo said, you need 1:53 speed at the slowest and it seems like every woman who can get that fast doesn't have much 1500m strength. Maybe if you took an Athing Mu level talent and had her training like a pro runner at age 14 like Jakob. But even that seems a bit of a reach.
I mean it's like asking whether a man could ever run 3:19.9 for the 1500m.
well, Keely Hodkinson has run 1:54.6 and doesn't seem that she's reached her full potential yet. Nowadays with the support of super shoes/spikes I think we'll see more women running 1:53 / 1:54 low just as we're seeing many men running 1:41; Wanyonyi or Arop breaking Rudisha's record wouldn't be absurd.
I also want to bring to your attention that Kipyegon has run 1:57.6 for the 800m and that was in 2020. I am not claiming she's capable of 1:53, but boosted by super spikes, perfect pacing and her improvement since then, I wouldn't be surprised if she was able to run a 1:55 800m, and perhaps even 1:54 high. Somehow thinking of her 800m potential makes me remind of Mo Farah's 3:28 at the 1,500m; a time that many thought it would not be possible by underestimating how fast aerobic monsters can run, yet he's done it twice.
Back to Kipyegon - running a 1:55 800m doesn't translate to a sub-4 min mile and I don't think that she'll run it, but a 4:02-4:03 seems plausible and that's probably enough for Nike to call it a success just as the 2:00.23 for Kipchoge at the Monza circuit was even though the ultimate goal was not achieved.
I think many are once again underestimating the athlete's ability and fabricated conditions here. If 4:02 is possible for Kipyegon there could well be a younger athlete rising that's slightly better and able to challenge the sub-4 in a few years. Kipchoge was able to run the 1:59 in Viena, for the Women's Sub-4 min/mile it might be required the equivalent of Kelvin Kiptum to break the barrier. But that doesn't mean we are far.
Nike's press release says they will run it in the same stadium where the Paris DL is so it's on the track.
The press release doesn't say but of course they are going to have male pacers (or I guess they could have women pacers jumping in and out but it seems easier to just use men the whole time).
I'm assuming they'll use a v formation and have the pacers in front and back of her. So I'm wondering if maybe she'll run out in lane 5 or something or if they'll have half of them run on the inside of lane 1.
When she ran her 1500 WR, she had good pacing for 2:11. Here she'll get it the whole way. So let's subtract 2 more seconds for extra 800 pacing and then an extra second for V formation. Hell make it two. So let's give her 4 more seconds for the V formation the whole way.
That's 4:03. She's still a long way from sub-4.
I don't think Faith is remotel fast enough to break 4:00. To break 4:00, you need to be alike a 1:53 800 runner at the worst.
Seriously, what’s going on? Faith must know what she’s capable of running or is she delusional? What time would she need to run for this not to be nothing more than an embarrassing stunt? She’s a goat, so is she really willing to be humiliated? I’m not understanding what she and her people are thinking? They must believe she can get close. Right? Like you’d think they would have done not just some computer simulations, but some actual partial dry runs to generate data.
maybe she is just genuinely curious and also wants to pick a good cheque from Nike?