ThatAverageRunner wrote:
I think people are being way over dramatic about all of this.
Especially with the AlphaFly compared to the Next %.
The only main difference is the use of Zoom Air. Freaking Zoom Air people. Nike has had this in their shoes for how long now? No one gives a damn when it's in the Pegasus, but now that it's in the Next% and they're calling in the AlphaFly, everyone loses their minds.
It's the performance of the shoe that matters for fairness, not the individual components. If they have the rumored 8% efficiency gain, that effectively puts people in a different race, like maybe 4 minutes for the elite men in a marathon. Racing would be a joke at that point between runners with different sponsors.
On the other hand, is this the patent for Zoom Air? If so, it's 20 years old, and expires this year. I think I've noted here before, maybe in discussion about the effectiveness or not of Spira coil springs, that air bags can really effective springs with little hysteresis. The studies seem to say that the carbon plate in Vaporflys don't function as a spring, but the Zoom Air in the Alphafly forefoot sure looks set up to be used as a spring.
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2001070062A2/en?q=tensile+cushioning&assignee=Nike%2c+Inc.