spitballing - i provide no numbers or names to back this up
vic 1/mamba 1 were great, a noticeable improvement over the miler and lanang. how do you make ANOTHER drastic improvement over that? you don't. each gen after got slightly worse. it's been a decade since then and there are still some guys who are wearing vic 1s. the same love does not exist for the spikes in between now and then.
after releasing many bad spikes, nike finally releases spikes equal to or slightly better than the vic 1 generation and it looks incredible... compared to the vic 3.
why are most of these "absurd, out of nowhere" times coming from no-name pros, high schoolers, and collegiates rather than the established pros? why have so many collegiates broke 4 indoors this year while pro 1500s are business as usual?
that's because the top pros always get custom and experimental stuff, they have had access to today's retail tech for years. if you're ~20 years old however - you've never put on a spike that wasn't absolute doggy doo doo until now.
plausible?