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Ever since Nike introduced their carbon fiber midsole shoe, Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4% in 2017, the debate on the best road running shoe has never stopped. Initially, the competition for the best marathon shoe was between Nike and Adidas, however, all other major sports shoe brands like Asics, Brooks, KipRun, New Balance, On Running, Puma and Saucony, to name a few, have since developed their version of a super shoe. 
What is the obsession with super shoes in the marathon? 
The marathon is an endurance race making athletes’ comfort and energy efficiency key to a podium finish. These “super-shoes” have carbon fiber embedded in them to enhance performance by optimizing shoe bending stiffness and increasing an athlete’s vertical jump height. Previous “normal” marathon training and competition shoes were mainly made of foam in their midsole. A higher carbon fiber midsole thickness of approximately 3.6 centimeters in super shoes further increases the athletes' cushioning and running economy by about 25% compared to conventional running shoes. 
These carbon fiber embedded shoes came to the limelight in the Nike Breaking 2 event, when Eliud Kipchoge attempted to run below 2 hours in Monza-Italy on 6th May 2017 using Nike ZoomX Vaporfly 4%. From then on (in 2018), Nike was leading the pack in marathon shoe design, winning five of the six Abbott World Marathon Majors in the men’s category and three of the six women’s Marathon Majors. However, by 2022, things were very different in the men’s category of the World Marathon Majors, as Adidas managed to turn the table on Nike by winning four races, with Nike only taking the remaining two men’s category races. In the women’s category, Nike won three and Adidas took two and Under Armour, through Sharon Lokedi, went home with the final win at New York Marathon.  
One would therefore wonder what Adidas has done in 5 years to catch up and overtake Nike at the World Marathon Majors. Let us look at the World Athletics’ (technical Rule 143) on Clothing, Shoes and Athlete Bibs. Rule 143 advises that a shoe may be customised only for aesthetic or medical reasons to suit the characteristics of a particular athlete’s foot. However, where “World Athletics has reason to believe that a type of shoe or specific technology may not comply with the letter or spirit of the Rules, the shoe or technology may be referred for detailed examination, and such shoes may be prohibited in competition pending examination.” Despite this, the rule is silent on the stiffness and flexibility of the carbon fiber plate on the marathon shoe. Therefore, with two out of three wins in the men’s World Marathon Majors this year going to athletes using Adidas shoes, what is their winning edge?
Let us now delve into the new carbon shoes that have emerged over the past 5 years. After Eliud failed to break the two-hour barrier by 26 seconds using Vaporfly 4% in 2017, Nike went back to the drawing board and came up with the Alphafly Next % that achieved the 1 hour 59 minutes target during the INEOS 1:59 race in October 2019 at Vienna, Austria. Recently at the Boston Marathon (2023), Eliud raced with Alphafly Next % 2 (an upgrade of the INEOS shoe).
Adidas’ first super shoe was the Adizero Adios Pro, a carbon fiber plate-embedded footwear.  This shoe was used by marathon greats such as Peres Jepchirchir who went on to win the Tokyo Olympics in August 2021. After that, Kenya has seen other great marathoners such as Amos Kipruto (London 2022), Benson Kipruto (Chicago 2022) and Evans Chebet (New York 2022 and Boston 2023) who all used the new variant shoe, Adidas Adizero Adios Pro 3.
Despite this correlation, it is misleading to conclude that it is only the shoe that is increasing the chance of Adidas' success in the recent Abbott World Marathon Majors. It could also be the individual athlete management approach increasingly adopted by Adidas compared to Nike, where only Gold and Platinum labeled athletes enjoy these top-notch benefits, with the rest being lumped into group contracts. Individual contracts other than paying better, allow multiple athletes to try their own unique training style and increase the overall chances of success as opposed to only a few very elite athletes receiving preferential treatment while the rest act more as subordinate athletes. This is a risky approach in the event the over-hyped (Platinum or Gold labeled) athlete with a super shoe has a “bad day in the office".
Lastly, because of the wide variation and availability of carbon fiber plate technology for elite marathon shoes, more athletes from other stables such as Asics, Under Amour and On-Running are also getting either podium finishes or ultimate wins. This could also be attributed to the 2020, World Athletics technical rules that require shoes to be used in major races must have been available to the public four months prior to the event. This rule creates an allowance where a development (protype) shoe is allowed to race for a limited time before it is made public. This allowance seems to be the one most companies are using to edge out their competitors. A case in point is where at the Boston Marathon 2023, Hellen Obiri running her second ever marathon, won wearing an On Running prototype, On CloudTri 1 shoe, in fifth position was Emma Bates with another prototype shoe by Asics, the Metaspeed Sky+. 
Among elite athletes, sporting talent is more or less similar, therefore, could technoscience be the deciding factor and not athletic ability? It is worth noting that in sports, the concept of human body authenticity is held in high regard because sporting narratives are built on the belief that bodies decide who wins and who loses. When all is said and done, we can be left with the question of whether it was human grit or technoscience that prevailed. On the other hand, sports cannot be seen to be technophobic, where we shy away from any scientific advancement. Sports should integrate natural progress in technology wherever it helps to improve the conditions under which the athletes compete. It should optimize their athletic performance in equal measure without predetermining the outcome but rather providing equality of opportunity. Super shoe technology is out there for all to enjoy, the race is on for 2023 shoe honours, with athlete talent held constant, may the best shoe win the “manufacturers title”.