Does anyone seriously want vaporflys banned?

Why is it a dumb argument? Because based on the underlying principal you are challenging we should just make people run bare-footed where nothing can improve the athletes efficiency other than with respect to force to ground transfer. Should we just say that every single competition running shoe needs to be x height in the forefoot, y height in the rear, made of material z? All this chat about "we are going to see 8 inch high midsoles is absolute nonsense" - if you truly believe this then you really don't understand footwear, performance or simple physics.

Either way, I take it your fundamental issue is mostly around efficiency of a runner and for some reason limiting this? Do you have an efficiency/economy metric in mind you think is fair for all? I mean if we are going to cap footwear then how about apparel? No more lyrca half-tights? They are clearly more aerodynamically efficient then a pair of split shorts? When athletes work on running form with drills, non-running activities etc etc to improve form isn't this all in the name of bettering running form and becoming a more efficient/economical runner in terms of basic movement? You cannot challenge a principal without breaking it down to it's essence and challenging all tenants of it.

So no - it's you that makes the dumb argument. Really that's all it - is an argument, because I am not hearing or seeing many solutions here except for people for some reason pissed off that a shoe company is helping people run faster through simply maximizing the effect of what that athlete provides in the first place.

You Said:

“Until a shoe is provided that actively generates its own force and supplies this to our bodies then quite frankly how can anything be off the table.”

I’m pointing out that, obviously, some shoes that don’t generate their own force are off the table already. Like shoes that are rollerblades. So we know there is a line, it’s just hard to pinpoint.

MyLittlePony Size12 Men's Velcro Straps wrote:

Even a good foam can have some mechanical energy return to it like a spring does.

This is my thought. If springs are banned, why shouldn't foam that acts like a spring also be banned?

Breaking down a few of your other straw men:

“Either way, I take it your fundamental issue is mostly around efficiency of a runner and for some reason limiting this? Do you have an efficiency/economy metric in mind you think is fair for all?”

No, that’s ass-backwards. Runners can be as efficient as they like...as long as that efficiency doesn’t come via the use of illegitimate equipment or training methods. As regards shoes, defining legitimate will be difficult but it’s a conversation we obviously need to have. Urgently.

“I mean if we are going to cap footwear then how about apparel? No more lyrca half-tights? They are clearly more aerodynamically efficient then a pair of split shorts?”

Running at 13 mph nothing you wear makes a meaningful difference to your aerodynamics so I’m happy to let Nike take idiots’ money on this one.

“When athletes work on running form with drills, non-running activities etc etc to improve form isn't this all in the name of bettering running form and becoming a more efficient/economical runner in terms of basic movement?”

The strawiest of straw men. Training is fine. No ones disputing that.

you want to ban faster shoes, when all the records in track, 97% of them are doping records?

back in the day i had a real hard time finding shoes that worked, i liked ankle support and they did not have that,

i liked to use my whole foot, and the shoes stopped that, i'd find a model that worked OK, and then they would upgrade it,

or more like a down grade, and the foot strike would be bad. these people had no clue.

now i can buy a shoe that works well, without having to hunt high and low.

guys like al salazar, made a big difference, by analyzing how the africans ran, and had the experience himself. so his runners

had a proper foot strike and allignment, and guys like that helped push Nike to make good shoes, where as back in the day,

they were a big step backward, compared to bare feet, which are not practical of course.

i was thinking that spraying on a coat of rubber and some grit would have been the best way to go, that is on top of a well muscled foot.

and you say well muscled foot? ya, american runners have lousy feet, due to shoes.

you should do a lot of exercises to develop the foot and ankle, BEFORE you do mileage, so you run properly.

go back to cerutti, gordon pirie, and al sal, an learn something about the foot. and mechanics.

of which, the old shoes violated usually every principle.

that bowerman guy, and his nike shoes was the ultimate travesty on the topic.

The Vaporfly will not be banned. Nike has a lot of money, time, and effort invested in creating and marketing that shoe. Nike owns the sport and will not let the people who supposedly run it ban the Vaporfly.

Whether or not it should be banned is a matter of opinion. The problem with technological advances in a sport like athletics is that it makes comparisons of performances difficult. But we generally live with that as a rule though there is precedent for banning a shoe. My memory of this is very hazy, but one company, I think it was Puma, made a track shoe that had brushes in the place where spikes would normally be. Again, I'm very hazy on this, but I believe the brushes were supposed to perform better on the new at the time synthetic tracks than conventional spikes did and they were banned for giving an unfair advantage. Normally though, technology is accepted and even embraced. No one wants to bring back cinder tracks or bamboo vaulting poles, and most people get excited by indoor performances turned in on the new, high tech, tracks.

But the difference between those technologies and something like the Vaporfly is that the new technologies are available to every competitor. It's not like some pole vaulters got to use fiberglass while others had to keep using steel or bamboo. Everyone racing at the BU track or the one at Reggie Lewis Center benefits from those tracks. But the realities and economics of the sport mean that not everyone can race in Vaporflys and if the company some people run for has not created a show that gives a comparable boost, and perhaps cannot do so because of patent laws, those in the Vaporfly have an advantage. I think that is a situation that should be scrutinized, though I cannot believe that it will be.

*Dumbest non-Rojo post so like 500th overall.

So what about the Nike Zoom Victory possibly being superior?

To ban the shoe, a simple rule: shoe must be made of the same material through out. This will ban spikes. I guess all shoes will be some rubber or leather material with this rule

I don't think the argument about availability will hold up. Possibly the IAAF could suddenly start enforcing its rule in a way to prevent racing in prototypes, but the VF is easily available at this point. It sells for $250, but the $70 price differential over other shoes (Adidas Ultraboost list price, for example) isn't going to sway anybody.

If the Vaporflies were banned, you'd have to come up with some physical criteria that shoes would have to adhere to in competition to distinguish between "good shoes" and "illegal shoes." Maybe you could limit stack height. I'd bet that the VF is already approaching the limit of diminishing returns for stack height, though, so any rule that allowed the VF but no more wouldn't do much good.

Also, don't forget the downstream effects of banning the Vaporfly. Suddenly Chicago and New York and every big road race would have to inspect the shoes of every AG winner, and you'd be telling tens of thousands of committed participants and fans that they can't race in their $250 shoes. It would be a gigantic disaster for the IAAF and all the national federations and every major road race.

So ban the Vaporfly. Then when NB, Skechers, Asics and Brooks start selling their carbon plate shoes along side Hokas existing carbon plate shoes.. No problem with that, right?

Ruh roh

https://hypebeast.com/2019/10/nike-zoomx-vaporfly-iaaf-investigation-unfair-advantage-sub-two-minute-record-marathon?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=facebook_post&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1571243302

Here is how I think this portion of the rule should be interpreted and dealt with: "Such shoes, however, must not be constructed so as to give athletes any unfair assistance or advantage"

First of all, it's about the top of the sport. IAAF rules like whereabouts dope testing is really about the top of the sport. So, shoes for hobby joggers isn't really a concern. The "unfair advantage" isn't about $100 shoes vs. $250 shoes. It's also not about historical comparison, like the people here suggesting that any shoe is an advantage over barefoot, so it should be a free for all. It's about runners with different shoe sponsors being on a level playing field.

You might say that other shoe companies also have or are developing carbon plated distance running shoe, so all is fair. However, all the reviews of shoes like the Hoka carbon shoes or the Skechers, etc. indicate that they don't measure up to the Vaporfly models.

Nike has released a study showing how their shoe has an advantage over other shoes, including other carbon plated shoes. I've linked an Outside Online summary article in comments in other threads, but no one has said a word indicated that they've looked it it, so I'll summarize it instead. The study compared four otherwise identical shoes: A shoe with an extremely curved carbon plate (Vaporfly), the same shoe with a moderately curved carbon plate, and the same shoe with a flat carbon plate, and the same shoe with no plate. The extremely curved plate was quite a bit better than the other designs. The relative deficiencies with the flat plate design sounded a lot like what reviewers of the Hoka carbon plated shoes say, when compared to Vaporfly variants.

Nike has a patent over the part that gives them an advantage over other carbon plated shoes, the extreme curve shape of the shoes. In the current IAAF rules, there is Note (ii) that you didn't copy and paste into your comments along with the main part of the rule. It is here:

Note (ii): Where evidence is provided to the IAAF that a type of shoe

being used in competition does not comply with the Rules or the

spirit of them, it may refer the shoe for study and if there is

non-compliance may prohibit such shoes from being used in

competition.

Nike's own study should be submitted to the IAAF as evidence that it doesn't comply with the rules or the spirit of them, because it gives Nike runners an "unfair assistance or advantage" over other shoe sponsored athletes. I suggest that there are two ways for the IAAF to respond. One could be to prohibit the extremely curved plate. However, that's already years out of the bag. Instead, I think they need to pressure Nike to release that extremely curved plate patent for use by other shoe companies in exchange for not having it banned. Whether that patent should be released for a free or a nominal fee doesn't matter so much to me, but it needs to be in the hands of the other shoe makers who are struggling to get their flatter carbon plates to actually work well. That's how I interpret fairness under "Any type of shoe used must be reasonably available to all in the spirit of the universality of athletics. " In this case I see "type" as the extremely curved carbon plate that Nike uses, not a specific model (or banning prototypes that some here seem to want to do).

zzzz wrote:

Nike has a patent over the part that gives them an advantage over other carbon plated shoes, the extreme curve shape of the shoes. In the current IAAF rules, there is Note (ii) that you didn't copy and paste into your comments along with the main part of the rule. It is here:

Maybe. But Nike isn't winning in the international elite ranks because they have a better curve than Hoka, it's because 9 out of 10 elite runners are wearing Nikes. And when Vaporfly mania started up, there wasn't such dominance yet.. people were responding to Nike's marketing, the breaking2 thing and Kipchoge's dominance.

Contrast the United States, where the shoe contracts are more diverse, you don't see Nikes winning everything.. amongst the American field that is.

I read your article and it was very informative!

Do Nike really have a patent on a shape though? I'm not disputing it but i would be fascinated to read that.

Bikes, roller blades and even vaporflies are only less ineffective because some stupid athlete coming from tracks decided marathons should be ran on roads with no elevation differences. Let's decide the standards for marathons are marathon du Mont Blanc and Pikes Peak marathon and see if vaporflies need to be banned and if running is really less effective than rollerblading.

Not banning the shoe because they're great and enforcement among the plebes would be impossible.

However Nike making a faster shoe every year is crazy. But there will be a physical limit as to how fast such shoes can go.

Let's be honest - if Kipchoge didn't have pacers and he didn't break 2 would we all believe in the hype of the Alphas?

Also since VFs have been out for 4 years now - how much faster has Nike's tech made it vs people have sped up? I got a pair in 2017 but have broken many PRs in subsequent years - how can it all be the Vaporfly if its still the same shoe? Kosgei wasn't even wearing next or alpha. She's got "old tech".

Abdoujaparov wrote:

I read your article and it was very informative!

Do Nike really have a patent on a shape though? I'm not disputing it but i would be fascinated to read that.

It's not my article, but thanks for reading it. Yes, Nike has a patent on the spoon shape of the carbon plate. The patent has been mentioned in the LR forum many times since the Vaporfly came out, but people here never focused on the curved shape. The inclination has been to think carbon plates are all the same. But according to the Nike study, the magic is in the curved shape of the carbon plate, where it dips suddenly on the forefoot end. That's why they patented the shape in the first place. Carbon plates have been used in running shoes before, so the mere presence of the carbon plate isn't patentable.

Here's the description of the plate shape in the patent:

"The spring plate may extend through at least medial forefoot and medial midfoot regions and may have an unloaded shape in which a front portion of the spring plate in the forefoot region is downwardly bent relative to a rear portion of the spring plate located rearward of the front portion."

They have several embodiments of what is patented, with an inner sole (midsole) and without (presumeably track spikes), and also a removeable plate version, but all have that same shape.

That shape decreases work done by the big toe joint more than flatter plates, and doesn't have the disadvantage of increase ankle moment (over no plate) that flatter carbon plates do.

See, this is where I'm confused. I've repeatedly read that that patent is not relevant to the current line of shoes. That it was filed around the start of the breaking 2 project but that Nike have never released a model that incorporates the "spring plate." Here is Hutchison:

"The second novel component is a curved carbon fiber plate embedded within the midsole. This is where a lot of the controversy comes in. One school of thought is that the plate is simply a spring, bending as your foot lands and then catapulting you forward as it springs back into position. Back in 2016 when rumors about the shoe first began to circulate, a Nike patent for a “footwear sole structure including a spring plate” began to make the rounds, fueling rumors that Nike had a spring-loaded shoe. This patent turned out to be for a different (and so far unreleased) shoe design, but the idea stuck. Most people now assume the Vaporfly is powered by its carbon fiber spring."

https://www.outsideonline.com/2367961/how-do-nikes-vaporfly-4-shoes-actually-work