Reports: Vaporfly to be banned

Hopefully the arms race is stopped. Many people (myself included) don't have the money to buy $250+ shoes that only last a few races. Part of the beauty of running is that it doesn't take a bunch of money to be competitive, let's keep it that way.

Also noting the Telegraph who spoke with Kipchoge for that exclusive is backing up the reporting of the Mirror and The Times.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2020/01/15/eliud-kipchoge-insists-two-hour-marathon-nike-shoes-fair-world/

"World Athletics have assembled a panel of experts to review Nike’s range of Vaporfly shoes that have sparked the biggest mass drop in road race running times in history. It is understood the governing body will soon introduce new regulations prohibiting their use in professional competition."

I think at this point if you're questioning the reporting, you're somewhat in denial.

wake up boy wrote:

It would be simple to limit stack height, if you are manufacturing a shoe you can have the largest production size at the limit and then all the corresponding sizes will be below. It's not difficult. As for other shoes, nothing has come close to more than a 1% improvement universally. Here in the UK the number of women running sub 2.30 in a calendar year has doubled. It's a joke. It's time to enjoy the sport for what it should be, a level playing field with shoes and preference based on comfort/weight, not looking to make things unfair. Athletics need to look at Kirin racing. Universal kit which is standardized.

bad example. Kirin racing purposefully sets back technology 40 years to level the playing field. It's such a tiny subset of bike racing. If you established those rules across the board, it'd hurt the bike brands that are the major sponsors and moneymakers for the sport. Similarly in running, if you eliminated differentiation in products, it'd hurt the brands that offer most of the sports back-end funding.

Now maybe you're thinking, "well, just limit racing shoes." Well, depending on the race, 95-99% of a race field races in a type of training shoe. Any ban would have to only apply to the elites, unless you want to enact limits across an entire production range, which would do more harm than good. Believe me, your average Hoka Bondi customer would likely have an easier time giving up their guns than their beloved Hokas.

Well, really wish I hadn’t caved and bought some NEXT% for my May marathon..

....but the Bondi has a 3mm lower stack height than the Next%

wake up boy wrote:

As for other shoes, nothing has come close to more than a 1% improvement universally. Here in the UK the number of women running sub 2.30 in a calendar year has doubled.

As for your other point above - False. Unless you're referring to some other type of measure, there's plenty of shoes that provide an advantage. That's part of the misleading way Nike has effectively marketed their shoes. Often, vaporfly studies are comparing the vaporfly to some neutralish control shoe with unremarkable technology. The study done in colorado on the original 4% compared to a spike didn't find a 4% increase on efficiency on any applicable measurable to race performance over a spike - more like 1-2%. you don't think shoe companies can figure out how to get racing flats to at least spike-level of performance with the breakthroughs in shape and materials recently?

As for your comment on "no other shoe has gotten close to 1%" - not sure on what measurable "%" you're referring to, but while unscientific, multiple methodologies the NYTimes conducted on expected race times conferred multiple models just within their subset that surpassed your barrier, including the low-stack streaks from Nike themself.

It's easy to make the observation you made regarding sub 2:30 marathoners and want something to be done to preserve historic comparisons. However, the main argument against these bans is that they are not comprehensive or thought out given the state of the running industry. It helps to remember that the running industry was a dearth of innovation for nearly 30 years, but things have woken up the last 10 years. This is not anything biking has dealt with continually, it's just running catching up on how they approach product development for performance.

birdbeard wrote:

Well, really wish I hadn’t caved and bought some NEXT% for my May marathon..

Why? are you expecting to not be able to use them now?

UmbrellaMans wrote:

So uhhh would it be a bad idea to buy a pair of vaporflys now? Im a D3 runner but will be moving on to road racing in the next couple months.

Vaporfly 4% Flyknit is $50 off right now. I ordered a pair and am just going to leave them in the box and return them if they get banned...

I appreciate this response. I could get on-board with a stack height limit of some form or fashion (i.e. the delta between the Next% and Alphafly). I understand the practical benefits from a regulatory perspective, but I do think it's worth thinking through the unintended consequences. Would RRCA and USATF implement the same policy for age-group and club competitions? A stack height ban would ban a lot of perfectly fine products from competition, regardless of whether that's the intent. What happens when someone gets beat at the line or from a team by a ringer in Bondis? By the letter-of-the-law, you'd have to eliminate a fair competitor for the sake of adherence to the rule.

I don't find the arguments around running economy to be terribly compelling. I believe the sport should be actively trying to improve economy, just as they did with previous technical innovations. At this point, the underlying technology of the Vaporfly is well known and the other brands have the opportunity to release their own versions. (I do think my earlier idea - banning 'surprise' shoes from competition until other brands can respond - is a good one.)

worth noting that the RW article says the alphafly and the “modifier NEXT%” worn by Kosgei will be banned. still think there is a chance they don’t regulate what is already in market

This is the big question for the general public.

How would wearing a “banned” shoe impact future BQ attempts?

MR T. wrote:

birdbeard wrote:

Well, really wish I hadn’t caved and bought some NEXT% for my May marathon..

Why? are you expecting to not be able to use them now?

Kind of.

I understand I am not an elite but I would feel pretty lame wearing some banned shoes en route to my 2:45 or whatever

If they’re unfair, they’re unfair. I could still do some tempos in them I suppose, but I don’t know what the point would be.

twofiddy wrote:

....but the Bondi has a 3mm lower stack height than the Next%

the proposed limits have mostly centered around 33-36 mm, which would preclude the bondi.

I'm more in favor generally of a stack height limit, don't get me wrong. I just think a lot of people are thinking that will solve the problem and things will go back to the way they were. I'm with 800 dude - a limit would at least cap how much offloading one could gain from extra cushioning on the shoe. However, all shoes do some type of offloading to different degrees, and brands, (i'd predict Nike first, for obvious reasons) will figure out ways to get closer to the current mechanics of of the vaporflys.

The cloudrunner/surfer i mentioned above are a great example. The individual pods and speedboard had a noticeable effect on lower leg mechanics and offloading. They do this with a relatively low stack. It's a trainer, so weight is still too high to be as effective of a racing shoe, but it wouldn't take too many tweaks to turn that into a raceable, 250k and the shoe is blown out racing machine that provides an advantage within stack height limits.

Science of Sport with Ross Tucker has a great episode on the shoes. It’s a couple of months old, late November I think.

His best idea is to ban stack height and he goes into depth about how it would fairly limit things, to include the reasons you’re talking about.

If I were to guess, I would say that they will set the stack height to 36 mm, so as to make the AlphaFly illegal, but leave the Next% be. The Next%s are already out there. They have rewritten the record books. Banning them now would be a mess, and would leave the question: what happens to all the records set in the now-illegal shoes? Scrubbing them may lead to major backlash, whereas leaving them could result in times like Kipchoge’s 2:01:39 and Kosgei’s 2:14:04 being completely unattainable for future athletes.

As much as I like to make fun of runners bouncing along the roads in pogo shoes, technology in all sports is constantly evolving. Any racing flat today would be superior to what Bannister wore, for example. The question is: how much improvement is too much? IMHO, the VF 4% should have probably been banned when they first came out. But, at least if they ban the AlphaFlys, that would end the shoes arms race, while leaving current records intact.

Maybe you're just more optimistic than me, but I expect the brands catching up to the existing gains within the new theoretical stack height limits would just be met by calls for further regulation.

Well, I think it depends. I actually expect other brands to catch up fairly quickly. I think it's important to note that racing flats have not made money for brands over the last 20 years, in fact, they generally lose money, so tech and development has not been focused on them within brands. I think that's shifting as Nike has made it an important brand equity point.

I'd guess that if the continued improvements are a bit more equitable across brands, there won't be as much outcry. There's a likely noticeable difference between a Nike Streak or an adidas adizero from the flats of the 70s (I've ran around in a couple old pairs of nikes from the 70s 80s - not a confidence inspiring feeling), but that wasn't ever a controversy. Same with Mondo tracks vs. cinders. If things happen a bit more uniformly, people see it as natural development.

I think the result of a 36mm regulation would be pretty minimal. It would stop future "clown shoes," but almost every shoe currently available would be legal. Additionally, enforcement would be nonexistent outside of higher levels of competition. It would be like the headphone rules. I'm guessing most races with prize money would even have rules saying that as long as the published stack height of your shoe is okay, they're not going to check (because why should the average joe with limited funds be on the hook for manufacturing tolerances). True, some people competing at a high level would have to change shoes, but it would be pretty marginal, I think.

When it comes to shoes, economy is just another word for speed, since shoes are obviously not able to increase your power output. I agree that the sport should be encouraging innovation, but I think that the stack height limit allows that, while still keeping the sport somewhat pure. At an extreme, there's little doubt that the cheetah blades that double amputees use confer a HUGE advantage over able-bodied athletes, so there is clearly a point at which even entirely passive technology can change the nature of running.

My issue with the "surprise shoe" ban is that I think it actually would significantly hamper innovation, as well as hurting investment in the pro side of the sport. Elite athletes have always been testbeds for new shoe tech, and they have always raced in prototypes or custom shoes. A lot of the marketing buzz comes from athletes wearing something new before the general public can get it. And athletes give meaningful feedback to developers before shoes finally go into production. Shoe companies would have less reason to sponsor runners if they couldn't exploit this traditional marketing playbook.

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

Also noting the Telegraph who spoke with Kipchoge for that exclusive is backing up the reporting of the Mirror and The Times.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2020/01/15/eliud-kipchoge-insists-two-hour-marathon-nike-shoes-fair-world/

"World Athletics have assembled a panel of experts to review Nike’s range of Vaporfly shoes that have sparked the biggest mass drop in road race running times in history. It is understood the governing body will soon introduce new regulations prohibiting their use in professional competition."

I think at this point if you're questioning the reporting, you're somewhat in denial.

Nike competition could also hire innovative technical designers and develop there own technology. Its not Nikes fault Brook and Asics build foot bricks . New balance has some nice new road race shoes , because it is a priority to the company. Seb Coe was still a paid consultant with Nike when the 4% was in development and used by elites in 2016 . Coe expert panel will not conclude he was part of the problem.