There are some absolutely ridiculous arguments on here.
'Some elite athletes claiming 5% improvements'
'4.10 milers now running 4.00'.
Craig Engels hasn't ran any faster in these new super spikes. Neither has Donovan Brazier. Maybe they're not 'super-responders'. Or maybe a 'super responder' is just someone who happens to have trained well since their last PR and naturally has run faster whilst simultaneously wearing some new spikes. For example, Elliot Giles runs 1.43: must be the spikes. Were the spikes not working when he ran 1.45 the week before, or 1.46 the week before that? Or were they not working for Adam Ksczcot(sp?) who was in the exact same race.
If it wasn't for Cheptegei literally passing out during the race, he would have won the World Cross by MILES when he was 19 years old, beating 58.01 man Geoffrey Kamworor. To say that the spikes and those bloody lights is the clear and obvious only way he'd have broken the 5k/10k WR is obscene. There used to even be talk that Kamworor could have broken it [10k] back in 2015/16, so OF COURSE Cheptegei had a reasonable opportunity to do it.
I'm not saying these spikes have absolutely no difference than wearing a regular pair of trainers (but that's kind of the point of racing spikes), but the fact that people genuinely think they turn regular runners into superstars is mental. If they were that good EVERYONE would be running PRs - they're not.
It's an easy excuse to say times were just because of the spikes, but it's boring.