Warholm continues to take shots at others' spikes: "It will be the last time somebody wins the Olympics in a shoe that thin."

I like this from Warholm as well even if I don't necessarily agree with his entire stance.

I personally just hate that a lot of people will do everything to discount what's accomplished in the realm of road racing while seemingly ignoring the monumental leaps in technology happening on the track in everything from the sprints to the distance events. In our sport there is no sole beneficiary of technological advancement, every running discipline has benefitted from technological improvements in recent years. Superspikes, supershoes, supertracks, wavelights. We can't keep talking about just the supershoes and refuse to acknowledge the existence and impact of the others.

OozmaKappa wrote:

I like this from Warholm as well even if I don't necessarily agree with his entire stance.

I personally just hate that a lot of people will do everything to discount what's accomplished in the realm of road racing while seemingly ignoring the monumental leaps in technology happening on the track in everything from the sprints to the distance events. In our sport there is no sole beneficiary of technological advancement, every running discipline has benefitted from technological improvements in recent years. Superspikes, supershoes, supertracks, wavelights. We can't keep talking about just the supershoes and refuse to acknowledge the existence and impact of the others.

Warholm is right. Track spikes should be heavily regulated. The purpose of the sport is to see who is fastest. The shoes they wear SHOULD NOT ever be what separates athletes. The integrity of the sport is at stake.

Wavelight should be eliminated as well.

+1

And nobody else cares.

Alright everyone, looks like it is time to disqualify any performance from an athlete competing on a MONDO-surfaced track until all participating in the sport have the same level of access to technologically-advanced facilities. All sprinting records that didn't involve digging holes in the ground with a trowel beforehand should be eliminated, in fact. The technology is going to continue advancing. The general genetic ability of athletes has not and will never advance at the same rate, because we are not evolving as a species to be more athletic. World records in often-contested events (especially those set with the help of PEDs, whichever those are, maybe all) will not continue to be set at an exceptional rate without technology. Only people stuck in the past resent the idea of new world records.

And this changes nothing about that fact.

zikes wrote:The integrity of the sport is at stake.

Wavelight should be eliminated as well.

You’re like the dinosaur baseball fan that’s hates the shift. Get over it - the sports integrity is not at stake.

Wave lights are the least impactful thing in track in the last 10 years. If you seriously think world record level athletes can’t click of splits exactly at the pace they want to with out little lights on the rail of the track you are an idiot.

rojo wrote:

"I would maybe say so, yes," he replies when asked if his own slimline Puma spikes, designed in conjunction with the Mercedes Formula 1 team in Northamptonshire, are more within the spirit of footwear rules.

Warholm smashed a hotly long time contested world record in his shoes, and then says that other shoes have an advantage???

All this shoe protest nonsense is absurd and ridiculous. They're just SHOES.

When Warholm broke that WR he PROVED that lightweight thin soled shoes are much better and faster.

Which is the same thing that I've been saying for decades.

The hype about the current shoes is unwarranted, ridiculous, and shows how stupid some people can be.

I love wavelight. Now people have a better shot at WRs and NRs. It's no longer a matter of who can afford to hire the best pacers. Just follow the damnn light.

Would it be crazy if we said moving forward all WRs should come in solo affairs. Just pure time trials like they do in the tour de france? I guess it wouldn't make for great tv. But the truest test would be you versus the clock only aided by pacing light.

What's weird to me about the wavelight hate is that Letesenbet Gidey can have men pace and break the wind for her for the ENTIRE race and that still counts, thats still considered the best performance in all of women's running.

And I say this as a person whose number 1 favorite female athlete is Gidey. Everyone has something to say about wavelights but no one says anything about men pacing women for 100% of a race.

rojo wrote:

I love wavelight. Now people have a better shot at WRs and NRs. It's no longer a matter of who can afford to hire the best pacers. Just follow the damnn light.

Would it be crazy if we said moving forward all WRs should come in solo affairs. Just pure time trials like they do in the tour de france? I guess it wouldn't make for great tv. But the truest test would be you versus the clock only aided by pacing light.

I think the reason some people (myself included) don't like the new shoes or the wavelight technolodgy is because those are things that the old record-setters didn't have at their disposal. In a "pure" sport (at least in a hypothetical sense) like track and field, the ideal situation is that the world record should be, in some sense, the best performance ever in that event, at least from a time-trialing perspective.

So for example in the men's 5000m, sure Cheptegei is a great runner, and running 12:35 is no easy feat, but would he have run 12:35 in the same conditions Bekele ran 12:37? Probably not. That detracts a little bit from his record. The ideal situation would be that Cheptegei, due to better training techniques, or just being a better overall runner on a particular day, produced a faster time in the same basic conditions Bekele had: normal (good) track, neutral weather conditions, etc.

There is something deeply unsatisfying about seeing a record beaten merely due to new technology. When we look at the history of a particular track and field event's WR progression, we like to think of how the athletes have improved over the years, rather than how much track surfaces, shoes, clothes, and other aids to running fast have improved over the years.

Some might counter this argument by saying that technology has always been a part of record-setting, and conditions always vary, etc., etc. That may be true, but it doesn't mean we should just throw our hands up and say "anything goes".

And others might say there is a certain inevitability to technological improvement. But that doesn't have to be the case. In theory, for example, while technology outside the sports world will inevitably improve, there is no reason that the conditions deemed acceptable for a record can't be frozen at some chosen point.

Okay so based on this logic the only fair way to do this is for WA to have a range of product (one sprint shoe, one MD shoe, one LD shoe etc etc) and these are the only products athletes can wear. Again using this logic, one can't definitively say that something as simple as different meshes used on the upper doesn't give an unfair advantage from one mesh to the other with something like breathability, moisture management etc.

Quick question - did the integrity of golf suffer because of differences in equipment? Multiple different technologies used across club manufacturers. Did cycling suffer because of differences in equipment? Has any sport?

All this "integrity of the sport" narrative? Focus on actually eliminating PED use. Make it a criminal issue that could end in jail time - I bet you that is a big enough incentive not to cheat.

The only thing I agree with you on is wavelight - totally unnecessary.

I can't understand how Warholm can be on such a high horse. His spikes were designed with Mercedes AMG and don't exactly look run of the mill. Complete carbon fibre plate construction with a nice energy returning curve in it similar to the prosthetic blades.

https://www.puma-catchup.com/faster-puma-joins-forces-with-mercedes-amg-petronas-f1-to-create-its-fastest-ever-track-field-spikes/

One a them joggers wrote:

So for example in the men's 5000m, sure Cheptegei is a great runner, and running 12:35 is no easy feat, but would he have run 12:35 in the same conditions Bekele ran 12:37? Probably not. That detracts a little bit from his record. The ideal situation would be that Cheptegei, due to better training techniques, or just being a better overall runner on a particular day, produced a faster time in the same basic conditions Bekele had: normal (good) track, neutral weather conditions, etc.

Why? You can play that sport in your head. Most of the rest of the world is happy playing by WA’s rules and record books.

For those who have been around a while, we see that the mystique has disappeared due to records falling so frequently.

Jordan Fan wrote:

For those who have been around a while, we see that the mystique has disappeared due to records falling so frequently.

Records are :

1. made to be broken

2. overrated

Wavelights are for the viewers, not the athletes.

OozmaKappa wrote:

Wavelights are for the viewers, not the athletes.

Yeah, it's a blast watching a pulses of light move around the track.