Should Nike’s new shoes be banned?
In sport, the credit often has to go to the equipment as much as the athlete, said Jeré Longman in The New York Times. In the 1970s, tennis stars took to using “spaghetti” rackets: the special weaving involved enabled such massive spins that the rackets were soon banned. It was much the same story with the fullbody suits that competitive swimmers began wearing: they provided so much extra speed and buoyancy, they were banned in 2009. And today, the focus is on a piece of equipment used in long-distance running: Nike’s Zoom Vaporfly trainers, soon to go on sale in sports shops around the world.
Nike’s trainers really do seem to make a difference. All three medal winners in the men’s marathon at the Rio Olympics wore Vaporflys, as did the winners of this year’s Berlin, Chicago and New York marathons. Nike make much of the science behind the shoe, said Ed Caesar in Wired. A thick but lightweight insole is meant to reduce fatigue in the legs; ultrathin carbon-fibre plates in the soles propel the runner forward. But some accuse Nike of cheating, said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. They claim the carbon-fibre plates act as springs, and so fail to meet the standards set by the IAAF, athletics’ governing body. The truth, said Longman, is that those standards are so vague, it’s hard to tell what “meeting” them actually means. We’ll just have to accept that all trainers enhance performance – “otherwise, everyone would run barefoot”.