Carbon-Plate Running Shoes
Of the top 15 men and women at last year’s Ironman World Championship, half were wearing some version of Nike’s revolutionary Vaporfly shoes. In fact, the top three women all wore the Vaporfly Next %. Athletes wearing some version of Nike’s Vaporfly shoes have been decimating the marathon record books over the last 18 months. Last fall Brigid Kosgei set a new marathon world record in Chicago, while Eliud Kipchoge used a new version of the shoe, the Alphafly, to break the two-hour barrier in Vienna last fall.
The shoes use a thick layer of “highly responsive Nike-patented foam in the midsole as well as an embedded carbon-fibre plate” that appear to have helped marathon runners drop their times significantly, including all three spots on the podium at the 2016 men’s Olympic marathon and the official world records for both the men and women.
The effects don’t seem to have been lost on elite triathletes. All three women who made the podium in Kona in 2019 (Anne Haug, Lucy Charles and Sarah Crowley) wore the Nike Vaporfly Next%. Four other women who finished in the top 15 wore either the Next% or the 4%.
In the men’s race none of the top three were wearing Nike shoes – Ben Hoffman was the first man across the line wearing Nike’s – he used the Next%. (The podium finishers? Jan Frodeno wore a prototype Asics Carbon plate shoe, Tim O’Donnell wore Hoka One One’s Carbon Rocket and Sebastian Kienle wore a New Balance prototype shoe.) Eight of the top 15 men in Kona wore some version of the Nike Vaporfly shoe, including fifthplace Cameron Wurf.
There doesn’t appear to have been a Kona shoe count done in
2019 as there was in years past, so there is no concrete data on whether the Nike domination of the top 15 in the pros extended to the age group racing. In 2018 Hoka One One led the way with 17.7 per cent of the field, as it had done a year earlier. Nike, though, made a dramatic move up the shoe count standings in 2018, going from 5.7 per cent in 2017 to 14.9 per cent in
2018, leading some to believe that Nike would have led the standings last year if there had been a count.
While the Vaporfly shoes appear to still rule the roost, the competition is hardly sitting around.—TMC