These shoes are simply not in line with core Olympic values, and indeed all sporting values, in regards to a level playing field and the fairness of sport.
If I were a Nike athlete, I would feel very unsportsmanlike and would not derive the same satisfaction in beating my opponents, knowing I have a clear advantage.
If I were a non-Nike athlete or other shoe company, I would now be questioning whether or not it is possible to appeal to World Athletics as to the fairness of these shoes and the obvious inside information Nike has on the new rulings of shoes, which has allowed them to release this conveniently 40mm thick heeled shoe in a suspiciously short amount of time. Also as to whether they can be banned from the Olympics as they are clearly against the spirit of the sport. Maybe a petition should be started against these shoes?
A good, hypothetical, example on twitter I saw, was to imagine wings were attached to one companies athletes javelins, and that they allowed them to throw about 5% or 3-4m farther. This would be a blatant advantage in javelin, so why are World Athletics not taking the same stance on shoes? Yes, they have new regulation, but Nike obviously knew what these were going to be and their competitors will not have time to release an alphafly rivaling shoes before the Olympics.
I might further add that I believe some sort of independent review should be conducted into World Athletics themselves, to source out any potential (haha) bias towards Nike.
