Reports: Vaporfly to be banned

All these people they just dont know what they are doing.

Instead of invest more money and special agents , yes also police , trying to stop the use and buy and sell of peds .

They want to ban the Nike Next%.......Nonsense

I always find it alarming when the public responds to a controversy with simplistic, over-the-top responses. It's no wonder politicians can't present complex, nuanced solutions -- people, especially in this generation, are seemingly incapable of understanding anything beyond the most basic of arguments.

These shoes have critics because there are fans and participants of the sport who feel they provide an unfair technological advantage. The two default responses have been:

1) "If we ban these particular shoes, we also need to completely eradicate all other shoes, nutrition, and smart training from the sport! It's only fair!"

2) "Any athlete who has ever run in these roller-skate equivalents is a no-good, cheating scumbag who otherwise has absolutely zero talent."

The reality here is that these shoes undoubtedly do provide an advantage, and up until this point, anyone who has run in them has been completely within their right to do so. Their times have been aided, and that's okay -- they haven't done anything wrong or broken any rules.

However, moving forward, it's fair to contemplate exactly how much we want technology to play a role in this sport. Thus far, the comparisons I'm seeing most are to swimming and biking, where equipment has helped athletes go faster to varying degrees. But an example I'm surprised people haven't mentioned is baseball, which has been under fire for misuse of technology in stealing signals. Baseball drew a line as to how much they wanted technology playing a role in their sport. Running is within its right to do the same.

nv4 wrote:

Regarding this whole Vaporfly situation there are two clearly distinct and polarized groups – one that wants them to be banned and the second that doesn't want them to happen. It seems however that those who wants them to be banned are mostly people who are beyond their running prime or those who are in their prime but are sponsored by other shoe brands or slower hobby joggers that for some reason rant about it. Basically all those who insist on banning are those who for some reason can't use the shoes now to run fast times.

My observation has actually been the opposite. Fast runners know they can run fast regardless of the shoe and are generally more aware of the technologies of the various shoes on the market. It's the hobby joggers who now feel like they can relive their glory days or youth through this new technology that makes them feel like a 'real' runner again (or for the first time). The former group who is still in the competitive phase knows any advantage by their competitive could be a win over them. The latter hobby-jogger group doesn't really give a poop about banning them because they know a 2% advantage over their hobbyjogger buddies doesn't really matter.

Bluesky wrote:

All these people they just dont know what they are doing.

Instead of invest more money and special agents , yes also police , trying to stop the use and buy and sell of peds .

They want to ban the Nike Next%.......Nonsense

How much does it cost to ban a shoe?

Ok sure if they can run just as fast you'd see elites still running in streaks. Double down Eliud...run London in streaks and see how long you last with Geremew. Geremew is not a better athlete than Haile yet he's much faster in the marathon. No name guys are running faster.

Sesamoiditis wrote:

Many competitive runners wear them because they know they need to wear them to compete. They know that while their performances are not tainted that their times are.

The ones who don't want them to be banned are the ones who know they will never PR again if they are banned and who don't have any other goals to chase besides a PR. Similarly, they are the runners who know that they will never run an OTQ or a BQ without them.

What does "tainted" even mean. It's ones subjective imaginary frame of reference that differentiates anything between good and bad, tainted and legit.

See for someone like you "tainted" means running race in Vaporfly shoes because you have defined your frame of reference that way. Yet for others even injecting EPO and using PEDs doesn't provoke thoughts about "tainting" their result. The red line is imaginary and exists only in your mind. Why would training at high altitude is not being considered as "tainting"? For example where I live I have no possibility to get benefits of high altitude training. Where is the fair play?

Also those who talk about consistency of results. There is no such thing. Medicine, nutrition, physio, everything advances. Just accept that you can't compare historical results and you have no problem with shoes anymore.

so what's the official word?

I don't believe the vaporfly in and of itself is cheating, other brands will close the gap. But this is the first time ever when we cannot compare times on the road to times in the past. When you look up results of the past you can see it stated on what type of track it was run on, whether cinder, grass or synthetic and you make a judgement about how good that performance was based on the surface. This is no different. We even see some users here saying similar things from time to time about Monacos "doped up" track as no one comes close to running those times elsewhere. Likewise we all know that Boston is a fair course when you have decent weather and no significant tailwind so we discount years like 2011. If 2011 had a slight headwind and Hall still ran sub 2:05 we would be certain that he had that ability. Yes it's not record eligible but you know it's a fair course.

Darren H wrote:

This might be a naive question, but after reading all the info etc, how do they actually work?

I get that the plate keeps the toes straight, stabilises the ankle, possibly reduces stress on the calves and the 'curve' encourages 'forward' movement - along with the zoomx foam returning a high degree of 'energy', but how does that make you a quicker runner?. Does the plate curve combined with the high fore/mid foot midsole increase your stride length? (a 1cm increase, combined with 180 strides a minute will make 324 metres difference over a marathon at 3 hour pace - nearly 90 secs).

Alternatively is it simply a matter of less stress on the muscles and potentially less energy being used, allowing you to keep a higher pace for longer?

Try to run a race in flats and you will understand how the Vaporfly works.

Racing flats are extremely fast shoes... for about 2-3 miles. After that you will start to feel that your legs – the calves particularly – are becoming brick tight. Few more miles and you will start to lose speed due to damage under constant eccentric contraction. As more and more fibers become damaged when extending them under load you are left with less and less function fibers to propel you forward. Thus it starts to cost you more and more energy to be able to continue to run at the same pace.

Advanced medicine, nutrition and physio lead to the athlete being better and therefore running faster. Vaporflys lead to someone running substantially faster even though they are not a better athlete.

No, you are wrong. You just assume you could but actually there is no way to objectively compare results with historical ones. Tell me can you compare blood doping era race times with those from 70-80s when there was no doping control whatsoever when entire Soviet Union and West Germany was on PEDs? Can you compare Adidas Boost era results with those back from 60-70s when they ran in flat hard shoes? The same about course. There are tons of factors that influence result by large margin. For example do you take into account whether runners in particular race had tail/cross/head wind in first part of race when running in larger groups? If you have a race where you get headwind in first part of race when you have pace makers and tailwind in last part of race when running alone – how can you compare that objectively with other races? Btw this is exactly what happened in Copenhagen when Kamworor set the WR in half. If it wasn't for the strong tailwind for the most part of the last 10k he wouldn't have the WR now.

Sesamoiditis wrote:

Advanced medicine, nutrition and physio lead to the athlete being better and therefore running faster. Vaporflys lead to someone running substantially faster even though they are not a better athlete.

LOL, it amuses me how you have constructed your box of imaginary belief that somehow medicine, nutrition and physio are "good" performance enhancers for athletes but the shoes are the "bad" ones. Why would Mauren sports nutrition be considered "good" performance enhancer? Why would taking NSAIDs before race would be considered "good"? Etc etc.

It just amuses me how people like to live in their imaginary boxes referencing entire world around them from their perspective.

This for sure, but I think there is also an element of the generous amount of foam literally being bouncy, thus increasing your stride length slightly without added effort from the runner, with the plate helping the shoe maintain its structure and not be a squishy mess more than anything.

nv4 wrote:

Try to run a race in flats and you will understand how the Vaporfly works.

Just a semantic quibble: Vaporflys ARE flats.

The term "flat" doesn't mean that the shoe is low to the ground or that it has a low drop. It means that it has no spikes, i.e., the sole is "flat." A coach might tell his athletes after a track session, "go put on your flats for a cooldown." He doesn't care if you put on the Adios or a pair of Kayanos. He means put on shoes other than spikes. Coaches in sports where cleats are worn will say the same thing, and they certainly don't expect their athletes to own a pair of road racing shoes.

A "racing flat" is a spikeless shoe specifically for competition. It does get shortened to just "flat" when you're in the context of road racing, but usually it's clear from context what's intended.

Thanks.

So essentially those saying they should be banned is because the vapourfly changes the 'natural' biometrics of running by requiring less energy to be expelled (less calf stress etc) for the same result when compared with the next most 'efficient' shoe.

Got it :-)

Surely you can't be this dense. If shoe technology is not regulated, there WILL be a day (perhaps decades in the future) when an engineer figures out a way to make a blade/pogo/stilt extension that allows ridiculous, superhuman times to be achieved. As an earlier poster correctly stated, that may create a fun new sport called "bouncing" but it's sure not competitive running.

Poster harwell made a good post on page 10. No thinking person is claiming that cheaterfly users are "bad people"--they are simply using what is available and unregulated. The existential issue the sport is encountering--which we have never faced before--is how to regulate shoe technology that is now crossing from foot protection into PROPULSIVE DEVICE.

It was an out and back and you believe Kamworor didn't have 20 seconds to spare? Okay sure dude. We already know all of those other factors come to play. Everyone knows a paced race is faster(I for one usually don't like paced races they're normally not exciting except for some very notable ones). We all know Steve Jones would have a faster personal best blah blah blah. Likewise does anyone really think Kipruto is that much better than Cheptegei? No. Cheptegei had a target and he was there only to better it.

aesthete, thinkerer wrote:

Surely you can't be this dense. If shoe technology is not regulated, there WILL be a day (perhaps decades in the future) when an engineer figures out a way to make a blade/pogo/stilt extension that allows ridiculous, superhuman times to be achieved. As an earlier poster correctly stated, that may create a fun new sport called "bouncing" but it's sure not competitive running.

Poster harwell made a good post on page 10. No thinking person is claiming that cheaterfly users are "bad people"--they are simply using what is available and unregulated. The existential issue the sport is encountering--which we have never faced before--is how to regulate shoe technology that is now crossing from foot protection into PROPULSIVE DEVICE.

LOL, there won't be such day because this is not possible from point of physics. You can put springs in your shoes if you like but they won't make you faster because springs would increase ground contact time and that is the last thing you want to run fast.

ShilohDoesntCare wrote:

It was an out and back and you believe Kamworor didn't have 20 seconds to spare? Okay sure dude. We already know all of those other factors come to play. Everyone knows a paced race is faster(I for one usually don't like paced races they're normally not exciting except for some very notable ones). We all know Steve Jones would have a faster personal best blah blah blah. Likewise does anyone really think Kipruto is that much better than Cheptegei? No. Cheptegei had a target and he was there only to better it.

20 seconds wouldn't be enough if he had that wind working against him in the last 10k. I have ran on this course and I watched the race. Anyway my comment was not about that