Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Super shoes have ‘blown distance running into a new stratosphere.’ Are
they benefitting the sport?
Technologies and innovations seem to contribute significantly to the
performance of swimmers and runners. When high-tech swimsuits were introduced
in 2008, swimmers wearing them began breaking world swim records at a
surprising rate. In fact, swimmers broke 25 world records in the 2008 Beijing
Olympic Games, 23 of which were achieved by swimmers who wore such high-tech
swimsuits. The number was a big jump from eight in the 2004 games.
Nowadays, on the ground, super shoes have been demonstrating how technologies
affect marathon runners’ performance. On September 24, Ethiopia's Tigst Assefa
smashed the women's marathon world record in Berlin, crossing the line in two
hours 11 minutes 53 seconds - taking two minutes 11 seconds off the previous record
set in 2019. She was wearing Adidas’s Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 shoes. Then, on October
8, Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum crossed the line in a world record time with a time of
2:00:35, shaving 34 seconds off, at the Chicago Marathon. He was wearing Nike’s
Alphafly 3 shoes. Both shoes are the latest high-performance super shoes, which
feature carbon fiber plates in the soles to provide a springy rebound effect, designed
to be used for just one marathon race at the sacrifice of durability. Critics
say such technology devalues and dilutes the former records. Also, they point
out the environmental impacts of those single-use products. In the meanwhile,
the world is excited to see when and who will break the two-hour milestone in
marathon racing, not so much about which shoes.
Enjoy reading the article and learning about how technologies could
affect world records.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/03/sport/super-shoes-marathon-running-spt-intl/index.html
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