11/29/2023 0 Comments Zoom victory elite track spikeI don’t believe companies are doing this to give their athletes an unfair advantage – after all, they are in the business of selling footwear (not withholding it). This technically complies with the ‘widely available’ rule but is obviously severely limiting. Many companies have made versions of the new spikes ‘available’ online – in a size 15 men’s. However, for a lot of Olympic hopefuls, they need every little advantage possible to find themselves on a start line at the Games, and WA rules aren’t making these shoes any easier to access for early-season competition. Lack of accessīeyond limiting stack heights, the new WA rules also mandated that shoes had to be widely available to all runners in order to be used in Olympic competition. The average spike at the time had a stack height of about 5 mm and was developed based on the principle that lighter is faster and less is more. While that remains a far cry from the 40 mm limit on the roads, 25 mm is much higher than track runners were accustomed to. In the fall of 2020, World Athletics announced new rules that declared a limit of 25 mm in stack height on the track. (Spikes always had plastic plates, and now some have carbon plates.) This changed was first seen on the road, and resulted in new regulations when it comes to in-competition footwear. In recent years, the thinking around shoe technology has shifted, and brands are now creating ‘super shoes’ that include more foam and a stronger plate. Gudaf Tsegay, 1,500m indoor world record – Adidas Avanti (not a super spike) Nike Zoom Victory 3 2016: Distance spikes that Canadian Melissa Bishop wore in Rio The new rules Sifan Hassan, one-hour world record – Nike Dragonfly Letesenbet Giday, 5,000m world record – Nike Dragonfly Wore the NB version that everyone has been tearing it up in. Ran 2 seconds faster than expected for a time-trial tonight. OK, I'm a believer in the new spike tech. With similar technology, these spikes are doing for track what the Nike Vaporfly 4% did for road running – they’re leading fans, pundits, and professional athletes to question whether the shoes are hindering or helping the sport, and whether this emerging technology should be better regulated. Nike has a sprint (Air Zoom Viperfly), mid (Air Zoom Victory) and long-distance (Dragonfly) version of these spikes, and runners sponsored by several other companies, like New Balance, are wearing prototypes. For some of these records, the runners wore what are being referred to as super spikes – spikes with added foam, and in some cases, an embedded carbon-fibre plate, similar to the plates now found in many marathon shoes. Beyond those, track has also seen countless area, national and age-group records fall – in seemingly more frequent succession than recent years. In the past 12 months, despite minimal conventional competition opportunities, seven track world records have fallen.
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