It’s Gotta Be the Shoes

How new shoe tech helped make the fastest man in the world the fastest man in the world.

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American sprinter Fred Kerley became the 15th fastest man in the history of the 100 meter dash last Sunday. He ran the fastest race of his life in the Olympic final: 100 meters in only 9.84 seconds. Given that the average adult reads about 200 to 250 words a minute, Kerley ran 100 meters faster than it will probably take you to get to the end of this sentence, faster than almost every other person who has ever existed, faster than all but 14 people who have ever set foot on a track. And he lost.

By .04 seconds.

Italian runner Lamont Marcell Jacobs Jr. won in 9.80 seconds, making him the 10th fastest man ever. With such small differences in times representing such huge differences in outcome, sprinting is all about finding the slightest edge. Being a world class athlete is part natural ability, part science, and part technology. And in running in particular, maximizing performance means wearing the right shoes.

Gone are the days where Jim Thorpe could throw on a pair of mismatched, poorly fitting shoes from the trash and still beat the competition: If you want to win races at the highest level, you need the latest in shoe tech. And when Lamont Marcell Jacobs ran ever so slightly faster than Fred Kerley on Sunday, he was sporting a shoe packed with the fruits of years of R&D, the Nike Air Zoom Maxfly.

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Comments (34)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    As much as I agree with some commenters that this comes across a bit like a marketing piece, I know enough about the long-distance side to know that Nike’s shoes do provide a slight advantage. Still, it really does come down the talent of the athletes at the end of the day. It’s not a huge advantage and it’s not like I could run a sub 2 marathon in Kipchoge’s shoes. This is one of the first times in decades shoes have really improved performance.

    But I have to say, finally a running piece on the site and it’s on sprinting…

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  2. Joe1776

    I'm a big fan of double blind studies. Once that happens let me know if there is anything of interest about this fancy insole. In the meantime I think this is just free marketing for Nike.

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  3. Ben Jarso

    interesting, although strikes me as very possible that there maybe a bit of correlation <--> causality mixup here. Could it be that Nike just sponsors the fastest runners?

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  4. Avatar photo
    CP

    Maybe runners should compete barefoot instead? I'm slowly coming around to the Chris Stirewalt view of the Olympics...

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    Nick H

    So Kerley was also wearing the Nike shoes? The beginning of the article makes it sound like only the winner had the shoes on and that they made the difference in the race.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Mudskipper

    Pfft. They can't beat PF flyers with the magic wedge.

    https://youtu.be/c0hkXdb81VU

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    1. Anonymous

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        Stomaino

        My father sold PF Flyers back in the day. The PF stands for Posture Foundation. The had that arch which was supposed to be good for your feet and posture. They made you "Run faster. Jump higher." They were made by BF Goodrich, the tire company. They have been brought back by New Balance with that arch and the PF logo on the back. I still have one of the giveaways. Not the ring but a larger decoder that does a couple other things.

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        1. Anonymous

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            Mudskipper

            Apparently as a very young girl I pestered my parents until they bought me PF Flyers. As soon as I put them on, I ran out into the yard and started jumping and was bitterly disappointed when I didn't start flying.

            This experience no doubt marked me for life and made me the embittered cynic I am today.

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  7. Frederick F

    Fascinating article! Thanks!

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  8. Bob Lebenson

    Just for a little perspective, though, Bolt's world record time in the 100 is 9.58. So in whatever shoe he was wearing, he would have won this year's race by over two meters. Which is a LONG margin .

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    George.Skinner

    This is a bit like the shark skin body suits that were allowing swimmers to set new records at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. At these performance levels, even a tiny advantage can be the critical difference. I’d think the question has to be whether this tech is sufficient to turn a 20th place competitor into a gold medalist, or if it just increases the margin of victory fractionally. Then there’s the question of whether it’s widely available. You wouldn’t want to turn running events into a Formula 1 competition of shoe technology. In the case of the body suits, competitive swimming concluded it really was a significant contributor and banned them.

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      David Chen

      Personally I find the Olympics to be such an artificial and contrived competition that this feels more fair than a lot of other things countries have done to goose their chances of winning gold.

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        Michael Darwin

        Aren't all sporting events today artificial and contrived?

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    Kevin C. Smith

    I remember seeing something about the shoes around the interwebz but not a ton of detail. This was excellent and it highlights an interesting conundrum—is this a performance enhancer? What is really different between these shoes and a PED? Not saying they’re the same but it makes you think.

    Great write-up!

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    1. Anonymous

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        David Chen

        If a shoe made you 10% faster, then someone who normally ran a 11 second lap would beat someone who ran a 10 second lap but had no special shoe. With the margins that separate Olympic medals, 1-5% gain is probably more than enough.

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        1. Anonymous

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            David Chen

            I'm only saying it makes a real difference, not that it should be banned.

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