I already made a similar comment on another thread but considering the wide impact these shoes has had on our mindset I decided to bring up this as a separate thread. I think there have been a lot of overhype and lack of skeptical thinking regarding the Vaporfly/Next shoes so I wanted to put some myths and facts on the table.
On of the biggest myths I have heard is that Vaporfly/Next uses ground braking technology that is not available to other manufacturers. The fact however is that both materials that have received a lot of attention in this regard – Pebax foam and carbon plate – has been an industry standard for a while now. Pebax foam (aka ZoomX foam) has been used in premium racing shoes by leading shoe manufacturers for close to a decade now. Carbon plate has been in the track spikes fmuch longer since 90s. To name a few shoes that use pebax foam – Adidas Boost, Reebok Floatride, Under Armour Speedform, Asics Nimbus, Mizuno Wave, Kalenji Kiprun, On Cloudflash etc. There are road shoes with integrated carbon plate as well – Hoka One One Carbon series, New Balance FuelCell, Nike Zoom Fly etc. The unique thing Nike engineering team has managed to do is to combine both technologies this seems to be the biggest breakthrough. Given this it was only the time when this would have happened.
Another thing I hear a lot is that Vaporfly/Next gives unfair advantage similar to fast swimming suits a decade back. Since I have trained in swimming myself during span of fast swimming suits and have worn one myself. I can confirm that any technology gives some sort of advantage. The swimming suits allowed us to glide through the water with less resistance giving more buck for the same energy output. The same goes with the running shoes but this applies to all shoes not just Vaprofly/Next. When Abebe Bikila run his second marathon in shoes he got unfair advantage versus his first marathon. When Denis Kimetto ran his WR in Adidas Boost, he did get unfair advantage over any previous runner who ran in shoes without pebax foam. And the same applies now. It's called a technological evolution.