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Friday 7 February 2020

A step

ahead? Nike's
Vaporfly shoe TAYLOR

changing
marathon game

By PAT GRAHAM and ALEX- MADE
ANDRA OLSON
Associated Press
To pick the favorites in this
year's Olympic marathon,
just glance at the shoes of
the runners on the starting
line.
Anyone wearing Nike's Va-
porfly model may already
have a head start.
The shoe has shaken up
distance running since the
world's largest sports ap-
parel company introduced
it four years ago, with tech-
nology credited for help-
ing runners shave minutes
off their times. To some,
the advances are an ex-
citing revolution. Others
have called it "technology
doping" that risks reducing
marathons to a shoe com-
petition. "Running is so sim-
ple. That's why people love
it so much. Now we have
a shoe that is blurring that,"
said Geoff Burns, a runner
and Ph.D candidate at
the University of Michigan's
School of Kinesiology. The
controversy prompted
World Athletics, the sport's
governing body, to issue its
most stringent shoe regula-
tions in decades ahead of
the Tokyo Games. But the
Vaporfly escaped a ban,
and the debate continues.
Now, Nike has a new rac-
ing shoe that also squeaks
by the new rules: The Air
Zoom Alphafly Next%,
which was unveiled at a
flashy fashion show in New
York on Wednesday night.
Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya
wore a prototype of the Nick Taylor lead on a
shoe when he ran the
world’s first sub-2-hour mar- gorgeous day at Pebble Beach
athon in an unofficial race
in October.
Kenya’s Brigid Kosgei was
also in a version of the shoe
when she set the world re- Nick Taylor reacts after making a birdie on the ninth green of the Monterey Peninsula County Club Shore Course during the first
cord for women in Chica- round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020, in Pebble Beach, Calif.
go last year. Associated Press
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