For all the technological claims shoe companies have made over the years—Buy these shoes to run faster! Jump higher!—Nike may have actually succeeded too drastically. Elite runners may be banned from wearing Nike’s Vaporfly 4% shoes in races later this year.
The Nike Vaporfly 4% uses a combination of advanced foams and a carbon fiber plate to rebound as much as 4% of the energy from one running stride into the next. According to a test administered by the New York Times, a runner wearing a publicly available version of the Vaporfly 4% ran 4% to 5% faster than a runner wearing a typical running shoe. Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge wore the Vaporfly 4% when he broke the two-hour marathon for the first time last October. Then Brigid Kosgei wore the same version to crush the women’s marathon record the very next day.
Image: Photo: Nike
