8 ms·

Running shoe tech: issues for the integrity of running (2020)

47 points by rstarast 6y ago

npilk 6y ago
Not to disagree with the broader point about the integrity of world records, but I thought this perspective was interesting: > I don’t want a five-set final at the Australian Open thinking “Shit, I wonder if this result would be different if Thiem and Djokovic could swap tennis rackets? If only my guy had a different sponsor”. A similar dynamic already exists in many team sports, where the elites can sign all the stars and smaller teams have to try and win with better drafting, coaching, player development, etc. And in these cases, fans often seem to love watching a less-privileged team overcome those challenges to win (see Leicester City or small college basketball teams like Oral Roberts as examples.)
- browningstreet 6y ago
  Your example is better than the article's, as Thiem's earnings put his net worth at $30M, and Djokovic's at $220M. That said, against the cost of racquets, each can buy -- or get from sponsors -- whatever racquets they want.
  - thereisnospork 6y ago
    It is also worth noting that elite athletes aren't necessarily beholden to using their sponsor's equipment. It is easy enough to doll up e.g. a Head racket to look like a Wilson.
    - piyh 6y ago
      Flashback to Gal Gadot tweeting with an iPhone while having an Android sponsorship.
    - brokenmachine 6y ago
      Agassi did exactly that, playing with an obviously painted Prince racket when he was sponsored by Donnay. I think this still happens a lot in tennis, but this was a memorable one.
- philippoi 6y ago
  That's why some team sports have imposed salary cap limits.
  - malandrew 6y ago
    Pretty sure it's to make sure that the profits of those that own the teams are preserved.
- amelius 6y ago
  Why don't they just give all players the same official rackets before the match? Problem solved :)
  - 29083011397778 6y ago
    For basically the same reason every programmer worth 6 figures doesn't use the same keyboard. Money clearly isn't the limiting factor, neither is not wanting the best tool for the job. "Best tool for the job" though, is subjective; and by the time someone has put in the thousands of hours of practice to excel at their craft, they will undoubtedly have preferences regarding the minutiae.
    - amelius 6y ago
      Tennis players can't choose their brand of tennis balls either. So it's only a small step to enforce the type of racket or any equipment which can cast doubt on fairness.
darkwizard42 6y ago
While it is sad to see that equipment is becoming a concern in high level running, I found it most disastrous when thinking about the effect of "equipment" in swimming. Some of the suits that Phelps and folks wore were just so stupidly cutting edge in terms of their effects on stroke efficiency. I think the world swimming organizations have done a better job of regulating here, but again it sounds like ALL sports are required to have their governing bodies playing a bit of cat and mouse to keep the playing field as even as possible.
- jonshariat 6y ago
  I don't understand why more sports don't just have regulation equipment that all athletes must wear and use. You aren't allowed to bring your own soccer ball, basketball, football, etc. Why do we allow some items that have a huge impact, to be up to the player/team?
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    the equipment is sometimes part of the fun too, you crush whole industries if you spec it
    - ashtonbaker 6y ago
      Which is sort of the point of not standardizing things. In cycling for example, if everyone rides the same bike, then bike companies have nothing to advertise, so no money for cycling teams. So the whole thing is really an advertisement. The one exception I can think of in cycling is Japanese Keirin track racing, which has heavy regulation on the equipment used, but supports and is supported not by advertising, but by sports betting.
      - dghlsakjg 6y ago
        The name sponsors for a lot of the top cycling teams actually aren't bike companies. A quick glance at the list of 2021 teams in the Tour de France shows only one that I recognize as a bike company (Trek). Bike companies do sponsor the teams, but they are not the largest sponsors by a long shot
PeterisP 6y ago
The patent angle in one of the OPs argument struck me as very important - I wouldn't automatically disqualify a need to purchase some a legal monopoly of a particular sports-relevant aspect, where some competitors are prohibited to have it at the whim of a third party (e.g. the author suggested, perhaps hypothetical, example of a shoe 'sold to public' by putting 50 pairs in a Tokyo store once and never again) does not seem fair play. Can we make a simple blanket policy that patent-protected gear of any kind are automatically prohibited in races? I mean, if there's no performance impact, then it shouldn't be a problem for athletes to use some other, patent-free gear, and if there is a performance impact, it shouldn't get used. Perhaps this could also negate the core issue of this article, as the impact on sports is arguably caused by the desire to sell such tech to mass market; but if the high-tech shoes can be sold to mass market only without an impact on competitions, then Nike can put in their shoes whatever shiny gadgets they want.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  I think this is a good idea. It reminds me of the "sharkskin" suits used in swimming that were expensive, single use, very effective and allowed enormous improvements in performance. Then had to be banned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-technology_swimwear_fabric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-technology_swimwear_fabri...
  - wging 6y ago
    Mentioned in the article, FWIW: > Swimming? Who can forget what happened between 2008 and 2009...
  - neolog 6y ago
    They didn't have to be banned. They were banned unnecessarily, hindering the development of fabric tech.
    - brokenmachine 6y ago
      They were banned fairly because they were so expensive that many competitors couldn't afford to use them, putting them at a huge, probably insurmountable, disadvantage. The cost was mentioned in that wikipedia page, but I believe they didn't mention that they need to be individually fitted and are single-use only.
frereubu 6y ago
Semi-seriously, I quite like the idea of going back to the original ancient Greek way of doing competitive sport naked. That would take care of quite a lot of the issues surrounding running shoes, swmming suits, and so on.
- slim 6y ago
  some sports still need equipement that need to be regulated : javelot, tennis, etc..
  - frereubu 6y ago
    Sure, it wouldn't work for all aspects of all sports, but it certainly would for a lot of athletics and field sports (i.e. most of the kinds of sports that the ancient Greeks would do). And with other sports you'd level the playing field even if there were aspects you couldn't control for.
- cafard 6y ago
  The comic strip Tank McNamara long ago had a Sunday strip that showed the eponymous ex-jock sportscaster stopping into a running-goods store. The weedy sales guy starts piling him up with road shoes, off-roads shoes, racing shoes, warmups, etc., etc. As Tank stands baffled at the cash register, his girl friend says "And to think the ancient Greeks did it naked." I think it was Running magazine that did not find his amusing.
  - frereubu 6y ago
    Ha! I'm a keen runner, and one of the things I love about it is that, as long as you invest in a decent pair of shoes (I'm a fan of Altra), it's pretty much cost-free. I really don't get all the super-expensive stuff unless people are getting towards Olympic level.
- francisofascii 6y ago
  A series of barefoot running events sounds viable.
janekm 6y ago
The main argument of the article seems to be that some runners get more benefit from new shoe technology than others (which may be true, and may or may not be mitigated by other companies developing different variants). However it makes me wonder whether this hasn’t always been the case... if shoes had been banned in the sport entirely then probably other people would have been successful? Also the comparison with tennis is a bit silly... you won’t get far in tennis without a racket that costs a whole lot more than any Nike shoe...
- unexpected 6y ago
  Most pro level tennis rackets are $200-$250. The Nike Shoes in question are $180.
- piva00 6y ago
  Not just a racket, you'll need at least 3-4 rackets to rotate around during a match to avoid losing too much string tension. Preferably all the same, all tensioned at the same time before a match, etc. I played tennis a little bit competitively when I was a kid, apart from rackets you will also care about strings, you will eat through them. The best strings aren't very durable and on top you will be often trialing different strings with your racket until finding a sweet spot for your play style. It adds up fast.
- snapetom 6y ago
  It would have been interesting to discuss the giant leaps of racket materials though. Wood to steel/aluminum in the 70's, and then graphite in the 80s. That would have been a more appropriate discussion. It would be interesting to see their third point, about patents, and how big of a barrier that was for tennis racket technology advancement and adoption. I'd imagine this Vaporfly issue wouldn't be such a big deal if competitors were easily able to create similar shoes.
  - geoka9 6y ago
    Once racket tech settled on graphite, there's not much advancement to speak of, regardless of what racket vendors might tell us. String tech, on the other hand, has continued to innovate in leaps and bounds, all but killing the serve-and-volley style of tennis at the elite level.
kleinsch 6y ago
I agree with many points in the article, but the idea that it’s unfair if one person’s body responds better to the shoe than another seems silly. Distance running is already a competition of who has better gene adaptations. I have a mediocre VO2 max, so I’ll never be an Olympian. Is that unfair? My body requires a longer recovery time after hard efforts than Galen Rupp. Is that unfair? That’s just life.
- racuna 6y ago
  Agree, I was in denial for years trying to "correct" my flat feet with minimal shoes (plus focusing in my running technique), arc strengthening exercises, stretches, and so on. But I never was able to run past 3k without knees pain. Then I bought cheap insoles with arc support and the next run I was able to run 6k without any issue. I'll never will be an elite runner. But at least I can go outside and enjoy a good sweat in the park time to time.
- bo1024 6y ago
  I think it's trying to draw a difference between how good your body actually is at the activity of running itself, versus how well it responds to a particular technology. Sort of like if they legalized one particular performance enhancing drug. The records would be set by people who happened to respond well to that drug (let's say).
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    to carry that to its logical conclusion, all competition should be held barefoot. Surely some humans are better suited to barefoot running than others, hence their "response" to shoe wearing is being tested.
    - burnished 6y ago
      From the article "And while on this subject of breakthroughs and records, please let’s not say stupid things like “We should just run barefoot”, or the common gaslighting method used by many that innovation has always been part of the sport, and the 2016 shoes were way better than Jim Peters and Roger Bannister’s shoes in the 1950s. Yes, but if you’re daft enough to actually entertain the debate about whether Kipchoge is a better runner than Jim Peters, great, but find someone equally daft who’ll have that one. I’d need ten beers for it to even seem worthwhile. Nobody cares. We get it, we expect innovation over many generations."
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Don't forget: This is amateur league play compared to designer genetics, or when actually practical crispr edit-in-place gene therapy hits mainstream. And basically PEDs is a lost cause, all they try to do now is contain it from frankenstein levels.
blendo 6y ago
“It undermines one of the sport’s most valuable qualities, namely that the outcome, the title, the victory, ...” This seems less about the integrity of running, and more about the integrity of winning.
emptyfile 6y ago
The idea that "shoe tech" is the issue with the integrity of running is pretty hilarious to anyone who follows the sport, weather track, road or yes even trail these days. Talking about doping of course, legal and illegal.

47 points by rstarast 6y ago

Not to disagree with the broader point about the integrity of world records, but I thought this perspective was interesting: > I don’t want a five-set final at the Australian Open thinking “Shit, I wonder if this result would be different if Thiem and Djokovic could swap tennis rackets? If only my guy had a different sponsor”. A similar dynamic already exists in many team sports, where the elites can sign all the stars and smaller teams have to try and win with better drafting, coaching, player development, etc. And in these cases, fans often seem to love watching a less-privileged team overcome those challenges to win (see Leicester City or small college basketball teams like Oral Roberts as examples.)

browningstreet 6y ago
Your example is better than the article's, as Thiem's earnings put his net worth at $30M, and Djokovic's at $220M. That said, against the cost of racquets, each can buy -- or get from sponsors -- whatever racquets they want.
- thereisnospork 6y ago
  It is also worth noting that elite athletes aren't necessarily beholden to using their sponsor's equipment. It is easy enough to doll up e.g. a Head racket to look like a Wilson.
  - piyh 6y ago
    Flashback to Gal Gadot tweeting with an iPhone while having an Android sponsorship.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    Agassi did exactly that, playing with an obviously painted Prince racket when he was sponsored by Donnay. I think this still happens a lot in tennis, but this was a memorable one.
philippoi 6y ago
That's why some team sports have imposed salary cap limits.
- malandrew 6y ago
  Pretty sure it's to make sure that the profits of those that own the teams are preserved.
amelius 6y ago
Why don't they just give all players the same official rackets before the match? Problem solved :)
- 29083011397778 6y ago
  For basically the same reason every programmer worth 6 figures doesn't use the same keyboard. Money clearly isn't the limiting factor, neither is not wanting the best tool for the job. "Best tool for the job" though, is subjective; and by the time someone has put in the thousands of hours of practice to excel at their craft, they will undoubtedly have preferences regarding the minutiae.
  - amelius 6y ago
    Tennis players can't choose their brand of tennis balls either. So it's only a small step to enforce the type of racket or any equipment which can cast doubt on fairness.

darkwizard42 6y ago

While it is sad to see that equipment is becoming a concern in high level running, I found it most disastrous when thinking about the effect of "equipment" in swimming. Some of the suits that Phelps and folks wore were just so stupidly cutting edge in terms of their effects on stroke efficiency. I think the world swimming organizations have done a better job of regulating here, but again it sounds like ALL sports are required to have their governing bodies playing a bit of cat and mouse to keep the playing field as even as possible.

jonshariat 6y ago
I don't understand why more sports don't just have regulation equipment that all athletes must wear and use. You aren't allowed to bring your own soccer ball, basketball, football, etc. Why do we allow some items that have a huge impact, to be up to the player/team?
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  the equipment is sometimes part of the fun too, you crush whole industries if you spec it
  - ashtonbaker 6y ago
    Which is sort of the point of not standardizing things. In cycling for example, if everyone rides the same bike, then bike companies have nothing to advertise, so no money for cycling teams. So the whole thing is really an advertisement. The one exception I can think of in cycling is Japanese Keirin track racing, which has heavy regulation on the equipment used, but supports and is supported not by advertising, but by sports betting.
    - dghlsakjg 6y ago
      The name sponsors for a lot of the top cycling teams actually aren't bike companies. A quick glance at the list of 2021 teams in the Tour de France shows only one that I recognize as a bike company (Trek). Bike companies do sponsor the teams, but they are not the largest sponsors by a long shot

PeterisP 6y ago

The patent angle in one of the OPs argument struck me as very important - I wouldn't automatically disqualify a need to purchase some a legal monopoly of a particular sports-relevant aspect, where some competitors are prohibited to have it at the whim of a third party (e.g. the author suggested, perhaps hypothetical, example of a shoe 'sold to public' by putting 50 pairs in a Tokyo store once and never again) does not seem fair play. Can we make a simple blanket policy that patent-protected gear of any kind are automatically prohibited in races? I mean, if there's no performance impact, then it shouldn't be a problem for athletes to use some other, patent-free gear, and if there is a performance impact, it shouldn't get used. Perhaps this could also negate the core issue of this article, as the impact on sports is arguably caused by the desire to sell such tech to mass market; but if the high-tech shoes can be sold to mass market only without an impact on competitions, then Nike can put in their shoes whatever shiny gadgets they want.

LatteLazy 6y ago
I think this is a good idea. It reminds me of the "sharkskin" suits used in swimming that were expensive, single use, very effective and allowed enormous improvements in performance. Then had to be banned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-technology_swimwear_fabric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-technology_swimwear_fabri...
- wging 6y ago
  Mentioned in the article, FWIW: > Swimming? Who can forget what happened between 2008 and 2009...
- neolog 6y ago
  They didn't have to be banned. They were banned unnecessarily, hindering the development of fabric tech.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    They were banned fairly because they were so expensive that many competitors couldn't afford to use them, putting them at a huge, probably insurmountable, disadvantage. The cost was mentioned in that wikipedia page, but I believe they didn't mention that they need to be individually fitted and are single-use only.

frereubu 6y ago

Semi-seriously, I quite like the idea of going back to the original ancient Greek way of doing competitive sport naked. That would take care of quite a lot of the issues surrounding running shoes, swmming suits, and so on.

slim 6y ago
some sports still need equipement that need to be regulated : javelot, tennis, etc..
- frereubu 6y ago
  Sure, it wouldn't work for all aspects of all sports, but it certainly would for a lot of athletics and field sports (i.e. most of the kinds of sports that the ancient Greeks would do). And with other sports you'd level the playing field even if there were aspects you couldn't control for.
cafard 6y ago
The comic strip Tank McNamara long ago had a Sunday strip that showed the eponymous ex-jock sportscaster stopping into a running-goods store. The weedy sales guy starts piling him up with road shoes, off-roads shoes, racing shoes, warmups, etc., etc. As Tank stands baffled at the cash register, his girl friend says "And to think the ancient Greeks did it naked." I think it was Running magazine that did not find his amusing.
- frereubu 6y ago
  Ha! I'm a keen runner, and one of the things I love about it is that, as long as you invest in a decent pair of shoes (I'm a fan of Altra), it's pretty much cost-free. I really don't get all the super-expensive stuff unless people are getting towards Olympic level.
francisofascii 6y ago
A series of barefoot running events sounds viable.

janekm 6y ago

The main argument of the article seems to be that some runners get more benefit from new shoe technology than others (which may be true, and may or may not be mitigated by other companies developing different variants). However it makes me wonder whether this hasn’t always been the case... if shoes had been banned in the sport entirely then probably other people would have been successful? Also the comparison with tennis is a bit silly... you won’t get far in tennis without a racket that costs a whole lot more than any Nike shoe...

unexpected 6y ago
Most pro level tennis rackets are $200-$250. The Nike Shoes in question are $180.
piva00 6y ago
Not just a racket, you'll need at least 3-4 rackets to rotate around during a match to avoid losing too much string tension. Preferably all the same, all tensioned at the same time before a match, etc. I played tennis a little bit competitively when I was a kid, apart from rackets you will also care about strings, you will eat through them. The best strings aren't very durable and on top you will be often trialing different strings with your racket until finding a sweet spot for your play style. It adds up fast.
snapetom 6y ago
It would have been interesting to discuss the giant leaps of racket materials though. Wood to steel/aluminum in the 70's, and then graphite in the 80s. That would have been a more appropriate discussion. It would be interesting to see their third point, about patents, and how big of a barrier that was for tennis racket technology advancement and adoption. I'd imagine this Vaporfly issue wouldn't be such a big deal if competitors were easily able to create similar shoes.
- geoka9 6y ago
  Once racket tech settled on graphite, there's not much advancement to speak of, regardless of what racket vendors might tell us. String tech, on the other hand, has continued to innovate in leaps and bounds, all but killing the serve-and-volley style of tennis at the elite level.

kleinsch 6y ago

I agree with many points in the article, but the idea that it’s unfair if one person’s body responds better to the shoe than another seems silly. Distance running is already a competition of who has better gene adaptations. I have a mediocre VO2 max, so I’ll never be an Olympian. Is that unfair? My body requires a longer recovery time after hard efforts than Galen Rupp. Is that unfair? That’s just life.

racuna 6y ago
Agree, I was in denial for years trying to "correct" my flat feet with minimal shoes (plus focusing in my running technique), arc strengthening exercises, stretches, and so on. But I never was able to run past 3k without knees pain. Then I bought cheap insoles with arc support and the next run I was able to run 6k without any issue. I'll never will be an elite runner. But at least I can go outside and enjoy a good sweat in the park time to time.
bo1024 6y ago
I think it's trying to draw a difference between how good your body actually is at the activity of running itself, versus how well it responds to a particular technology. Sort of like if they legalized one particular performance enhancing drug. The records would be set by people who happened to respond well to that drug (let's say).
- bagacrap 6y ago
  to carry that to its logical conclusion, all competition should be held barefoot. Surely some humans are better suited to barefoot running than others, hence their "response" to shoe wearing is being tested.
  - burnished 6y ago
    From the article "And while on this subject of breakthroughs and records, please let’s not say stupid things like “We should just run barefoot”, or the common gaslighting method used by many that innovation has always been part of the sport, and the 2016 shoes were way better than Jim Peters and Roger Bannister’s shoes in the 1950s. Yes, but if you’re daft enough to actually entertain the debate about whether Kipchoge is a better runner than Jim Peters, great, but find someone equally daft who’ll have that one. I’d need ten beers for it to even seem worthwhile. Nobody cares. We get it, we expect innovation over many generations."

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

Don't forget: This is amateur league play compared to designer genetics, or when actually practical crispr edit-in-place gene therapy hits mainstream. And basically PEDs is a lost cause, all they try to do now is contain it from frankenstein levels.

blendo 6y ago

“It undermines one of the sport’s most valuable qualities, namely that the outcome, the title, the victory, ...” This seems less about the integrity of running, and more about the integrity of winning.

emptyfile 6y ago

The idea that "shoe tech" is the issue with the integrity of running is pretty hilarious to anyone who follows the sport, weather track, road or yes even trail these days. Talking about doping of course, legal and illegal.