We get to study down at the molecular level of wiring up athletes and stopping and studying very specific fractions of inches and spaces, because frankly that’s where gold medals are won or lost.” Origins in waffle irons “The difference today is we have an incredibly deep dataset. “It’s always been an endeavor for the past 50 years to improve the performance of athletes,” Hoke said in an interview. To make its products for the 2020 Olympics, Nike says it incorporated data and insights culled at the Nike Sport Research Lab, which uses scanners and sensors to analyze athletes in motion, providing the designers with sophisticated digital models. These products keep getting more technologically advanced in part because the design capabilities behind them do too.
Pack a carbon-fiber plate in it, as Nike did, and it seems it can make a notable difference for a runner over the course of a marathon. ZoomX, for instance, is Nike’s name for Pebax, a foam created by chemical company Arkema that Runner’s World found to offer much better energy return than others on the market. The footwear all top athletes wear today comes loaded with springy, stabilizing features such as rigid plates and resilient foams, but some materials can work better than others. World Athletics was responding to concerns that Nike’s shoes conferred an unfair advantage. The Air Zoom Alphafly Next% is slated for release in February, in time for the four-month window to elapse before the Olympics, it has just one plate, and Nike says the sole height is right at World Athletics’ limit, making it eligible according to the company. They dictate a shoe must have been commercially available for at least four months before it can be used in competition, it can have no more than one embedded plate, and the sole can be no thicker than 40 millimeters. Nike unveiled its Olympic shoes two days before World Athletics, the governing body of track and field, released its new rules on the shoes runners can wear in competition. The upper is a material Nike calls Atomknit, a stiffer version of its knitted Flyknit that Nike claims locks the foot down better.Ītomknit also appears in Nike’s other new track spike, the Air Zoom Viperfly, a shoe for sprinters that also uses a carbon-fiber plate and has a Zoom Air pod in the forefoot.Ī product shot of the Nike Air Zoom Alphafly Next%
Nike air dictate 2 running shoes update#
In the forefoot is what Nike calls a Zoom Air pod, an update of Nike’s usual “air” bags, but with a structure in the center to hold it in a flattened shape, providing better energy return according to Nike. Its Air Zoom Victory track spike will feature the same ZoomX foam from its marathon line along with a carbon-fiber plate, making for what Nike says is a lightweight shoe with the most energy-return of any spikes it’s made. But they illustrate the leading role technology and data play in creating athletic footwear today.Īt July’s games, Nike’s track runners will have two new shoes Nike says leverage what it has learned from its marathon shoes for shorter, faster races.
Whether they’re enough to earn gold for the athletes who’ll wear them remains to be seen. In the wake of all the controversy over its Vaporfly and Alphafly marathon running shoes, which some argue work so well they create a mechanical advantage, the company has unveiled a range of new products it says enhance performance, including the next version of its Alphafly.
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