Bad grammar. She's speaking in a hypothetical or subjunctive mood. She should have said, "My career would look enormously different if the playing field were level."
Bad grammar. She's speaking in a hypothetical or subjunctive mood. She should have said, "My career would look enormously different if the playing field were level."
I don’t believe that she was a doper. If you view her career span, a carbon plate didn’t play a role.
notrump. wrote:
Bad grammar. She's speaking in a hypothetical or subjunctive mood. She should have said, "My career would look enormously different if the playing field were level."
The subjunctive mood is tricky to get a handle on, so no judgement, but I think SF was probably talking about the past, rather than some timeless hypothetical state (eg: if I were a carpenter) , and in that case the proper thing to say (I think) would have been "if the playing field had been level", which is the past subjunctive mood. See
https://grammarist.com/grammar/subjunctive-mood/In any case, I'm not sure you can write off SF's NY victory to Vaporflys. The only runner with a real shot at her was Mary Keitany, who I think was also wearing them. However, I think a very good argument could be made that without the shoes she would have not made the last Olympic team. As I remember, she really bonked in the heat, and without the edge provided by the Vaporflys (in particular their extraordinary cushioning for a shoe so light), I suspect there is a very good chance she would not have finished the race, never mind qualified.
Keitany is sponsored by adidas.
BraveyNation brought to you by Champion wrote:
Keitany is sponsored by adidas.
Some of the top non-Nike athletes have occasionally been given permission to use the Vaporflys, so I did a bit of Googling. I couldn't find what Keitany used in 2017, when Shalane won NY, but Keitany did use Adidas when she won in 2018, so it appears you are correct.
So would it have been close if they'd been wearing the same shoes? Maybe. Keitany ended up 1:01 minutes back, which I guess could be attributed to the shoes. But she seemed to be laboring a lot in the second half of the race, and admitted afterwards to not being at the top of her game (she'd missed a couple of periods). Shalane, on the other hand, looked quite fresh at the finish line, so I have a feeling that had it been closer, she would have had the better finishing speed. But who knows.
BTW, I wish she had said 'had there been no doping', rather than had it been a level playing field. I'm sure that's what she meant. But I always cringe a little when a sponsored athlete talks about level playing fields. I mean, just the fact that some athletes are paid to run, and able to spend every waking moment training and recovering makes the field uneven right from the get go. If they really think the Vaporflys are that much superior, all they have to do is drop their sponsor (like Canadian Reid Coolsaet did this spring) and buy a pair - they have been widely available for years. Hell, Nike was even giving out free AlphaFlys at the last Olympic Trials, where unsponsored Jacob Riley grabbed a pair and came in second.
Finally, I wish that instead of complaining about VaporFlys, or in addition to it, non-Nike athletes would get on their own sponsors to build a competitive shoe. Hell, it's been 4 years since the VaporFly came out, why are we only now seeing other companies taking shoe development out of the hands of marketing and putting it in the hands of engineers - that is, testing that their high-falluting claims of improvement are actually making their shoes faster. I mean, what the hell is Fresh Foam anyways?
Of course I'm right, JFC.