Meh. They might help a bit, but shouldn't be as controversial as road shoes.
Take ten 2:10 marathoners circa 2016 and give five of them Next% or equivalent and the other five keep their old shoe. The Next%ers are gonna dominate.
But tonight you saw Ajee in old Avantis demolish a bunch of women wearing Dragonflies. Take Kate Grace, she ran less than a tenth below 2:03. Did really get a spike benefit? She hasn't raced below 2:04 once in 20 races/8 years. Timothy Cheruiyot has been rocking them since 2019 but he is yet to PR.
Maybe they matter more in the longer track races, but again perspective compared to the shoe is necessary. **Of the fastest 10 marathon times in history, 9 of them were run between April 2019 and December 2020.** That's nuts.
Yet despite Nike having their athletes in the spikes most of 2019 and NB getting their spikes out late 2019/2020, how are the top 10 all time lists going for the 5000/10000??? They've been totally rewritten I assume given by the reactions??
1 of the the top 10 and 4 of top 30 in the 5000m, 1/10 and **1/30** in the 10000m. For the women it is worse - 1/10 and 4/30 for the 5000m, 1/10 and 1/30 for the 10000m. The advantage conferred by the spikes seems to be an order of magnitude lower than that offered by the shoes.
For real, delete Gidey and Cheptegei and this is a null conversation where the only mid d/long d track record broken recently is by Tseguy not in super spikes.
Again, spikes could be helping, but I think people are losing perspective vis a vis the mess that was road shoes.