Now that we all know about the function and how the Vaporflys work. We must discuss whether or not the shoes should be banned. The IAAF released a statement on the Vaporflys and any other carbon-plated shoe. They said that they would permit the use of these shoes in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, but they banned the use of prototypes that were not available to everyone, like the Aphaflys Kipchoge broke 2 hours for the marathon in.
I agree with the IAAF’s stance. Everyone should have access to the best shoes possible. Like every other well known professional athlete, good professional runners are sponsored. A company gives the athlete money for the athlete to wear and endorse the company’s product. A lot of these companies are shoe companies and for runners shoes are the most important and only form of equipment. So to have the best, most innovative shoe would help runners the most. When the Vaporflys originally came out, the runners sponsored by the other companies couldn’t run in them because the other companies didn’t want their runners wearing a rival company’s product. Because of this, Nike and their runners have been dominant in marathons ever since the Vaporflys came out. In 2018, of the 6 Abbott World Marathon Majors, which are the 6 biggest, most renowned marathons in the world, 5 of the men’s winners and 3 of the women’s winners wore Nike shoes. Nike continued its dominance in 2019 with all 6 of the men and 4 of the women winning in Nikes.
Other shoe companies have been going crazy trying to replicate Nike’s Vaporflys, and now in 2020, they have finally created their own carbon fiber plate based shoe. All the relevant running shoe companies, Brooks, Asics, Hoka, New Balance, Adidas, Saucony, have made their own rendition of the shoe.
Now every sponsored, professional runner has a carbon plate based running shoe thus evening the playing field. Even amature runners can use them if they are willing to drop a sizable amount of money.
One Quick Boi 