The race to find the fastest shoe is in full throttle and with manufacturers spending millions of pounds on research it’s no surprise athletes are running faster than ever
t New Balance’s sports research lab in Boston, there is a humanoid robot that actually sweats and breathes. Andi is his name and the more the temperature and humidity in his environmental chamber goes up, the more his heat sensors twitch and the 150 pores on his body become moist. It amounts to $500,000 worth of kit, and the idea is it will make sportswear that evaporates sweat and cools the body faster without putting humans at risk.
But at the highest level, this is a game of fine margins and huge stakes. Britain’s 1500m world champion, Josh Kerr, says he puts in “hours and hours” with engineers and designers at his sponsors, Brooks, because he knows how vital it is. “It’s going to make or break our career, so having a hand in that is important,” he says.
Hoogkamer also put the original Nike Vaporfly shoe, which came out in 2017, to scientific scrutiny. For years afterwards he says athletes would secretly ask him to test their running economy in different brands before they signed a new shoe contract. That, he says, happens less now. “Most of the brands have a competitive spike now,” says Geoff Burns, a biomechanics expert and sport physiologist at the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee. “Whereas when Tokyo rolled around in 2021 I would have bet dollars to doughnuts that almost every athlete from 800m to 10,000m would have chosen the Nike Dragonfly or the Victory if they could.”
Puma’s vice-president of innovation, Romain Girard, points to the company’s new superfoam, which is made from aliphatic TPU and not Pebax like most other brands. A third factor in the faster times on the track comes down to nutrition. Last year the Swedish company Maurten released its bicarb system which allows athletes to ingest sodium bicarbonate, believed to be beneficial during strenuous exercise, without having to take multiple trips to the toilet.
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