Why The Olympics Banned Nike

🥇What's your favorite track and field event at the Olympics?

Can we also have a competition where this is not banned? Just to see how far this technology can go

BG music is loud.

As an avowed shoe nerd, I’d like to correct the beginning of the video. Kipchoge broke two hours in the Alphafly, a then brand new prototype. By that point the Vaporfly had been around for years. We can moan about supershoes all we want, but that shift happened long ago - for better or worse it happened, and we’re living in that world. Maybe most importantly, unlike in the early days, every company now has a carbon racing shoe and there’s not much between them. If anything, Nike is being left behind by many of its competitors, with On and Adidas arguably developing better racing product nowadays. Most Nike athletes aren’t running in the newest Vaporfly models, and many of its marathoners are still running in the first alphafly - a now 4 year old shoe. I think you’re correct to point out that the shoes can hurt the sport - I’d say from 2016 to 2019 for sure Nike athletes benefitted hugely from their innovation. Look at the Rio marathon podium or the US Olympic trials 2016. Nobody even knew about the Vaporfly prototypes beside the Nike athletes and that seems grubby at best. And although the shoes get a lot of credit for these world records, one underreported factor is the huge advances in endurance sports nutrition that have been made in about the same timeframe. When it comes to sprints, the benefits really aren’t very clear at all. The winning time in the Tokyo 100m would have been 5th in London 2012 for example. If shoe tech was that important in the sprints, I guarantee we would see a lot more 9.7 and 9.6 times. As it is, 9.8 which was good but not great 10-15 years ago is usually good enough to win diamond leagues, world championships and Olympic 100m races.

the comparision with Formula 1 is overblown imo, if anything it is more like cycling where a great aerodynamic bike can give great benefits to riders as they have to expend less energy for the same speeds but ultimately the human is still the engine.

This video is closing in on 6 years late. The discourse about the super shoes peaked just before Tokyo, when super spikes were just hitting the market. Also, I really hate the clickbait title. The IOC never banned any shoe. World Athletics provided guidelines. The IOC simply enforces the rules of the governing body for each event.

while shoe technology can give athletes an edge, let's not forget the real reason the athlete win medals: Doping.

Usain Bolt after wearing the shoes : Insane Bolt

The “4%” label refers to the claimed improvement in running economy, a measure of oxygen consumption at a given pace. If Kipchoge ran 4% faster with super shoes we'd expect to see a time of about 1:58:32. He actually ran about 3% faster with the shoes, special pacers, pacing lights, a course specifically for this, and a day picked out of a window of days for the weather.

There are many inaccuracies in this video - for example when you talk about Kipchoge's Alphafly's from 2:00:25 attempt, you show wrong shoes - much newer Alphafly model. These from the video were not even produced when Kipchoge ran 2:00:25 in 2017. Also, in 2:06 you show Yeezys - popular (designed by Kanye West) streetwear sneakers - as an example of running shoes. And I have just watched 3 minutes of the video yet.

Sooo..I am not slow..I just dont have the right shoe😂😂

Finding efficiency is cheating now? What BS

I recently watched the video by Cleo Abram about this and their the Nike exec told it was to further human capabilities but its not because of the human being better that the records are broken and imo i dont like this because of the non-human factor in the records being broken.

“Without the athletes, super shoes would just be very expensive slippers” Quote of the day 🔥

it gives you up to 4% running economy not 4% faster...

IOC should just make a standard shoe layout which needs to be used at Olympics and can be produced by every sponsor. Much better than ruling that can be checked for loop holes.

this has got to be one of the greatest ads for Nike

2:06 Yeezy as an example of running shoe 😆

Needing super shoes to beat Bolt explains how GOATed he is

but the OG supershoes is pretty much Brooks Fusion at 1989