On October 12, 2019, Eliud Kipchoge breaks the mythical two-hour marathon barrier in 1h59‘40’‘. On the Kenyan’s feet: shoes with a carbon plate that improve running economy by 4 to 6%, saving two to three minutes over 42 kilometers. Since that date, all official and unofficial world records have been set with this technology. The shoe no longer increases performance: it defines it.
This technological revolution raises a fundamental question for sport and beyond: what does a record still measure when equipment becomes determinant? Athletics joins automobile racing and swimming in this gray zone where technology redefines the limits of human performance.
The Essentials
- 4 to 6%: average improvement in running economy with carbon plate shoes
- 2h00‘35: Kelvin Kiptum’s world record set in October 2023 in Chicago, 34 seconds better than the previous record
- 100%: proportion of men’s and women’s world records set with this technology since 2019
- 2017: launch of the Nike Vaporfly 4%, the first commercially available carbon plate shoe
- World Athletics: the global governing body had to create new regulations to govern this technology
Innovation Erases Sixteen Years of Training
The numbers reveal the extent of the shift. Between 2003 and 2018, the men’s world marathon record improved by 2 minutes and 42 seconds — the fruit of fifteen years of optimizing training, nutrition, and recovery. In five years with carbon plate shoes, it gained an additional 1 minute and 11 seconds. A decade and a half of human refinement caught up by an accessory.
Among women, the disruption is even more brutal. Brigid Kosgei smashes a 16-year-old record in 2019, as if Paula Radcliffe had been running with an invisible handicap. Technological progress suddenly makes performances that seemed insurpassable obsolete.
This acceleration stems from a simple yet revolutionary mechanical principle. The carbon plate inserted into the midsole foam acts like a spring that returns energy from each stride. Combined with ultra-lightweight foam developed specifically for these shoes, it reduces the energy cost of running. Concretely, a runner consumes less oxygen to maintain the same speed — the equivalent of a physiological turbo.
Biomechanical studies confirm the extent of this invisible assistance. Research published in Sports Medicine shows that elite runners gain an average of 4% efficiency with these shoes. For a world-class marathoner, this represents two to three minutes — exactly the gap observed on the track. The equipment no longer compensates for weaknesses: it multiplies strengths.
This improvement reveals its inequalities. Runners with a heel-to-toe stride benefit more from the technology than those who attack with their forefoot. The advantage also varies depending on speed: the higher the pace, the more the carbon plate becomes determinant. A technical discrimination establishes itself at the very heart of biomechanics. This explains why the effects are spectacular in the marathon but less visible over 800 meters.
The Industry Dictates New Standards
Faced with this revolution, World Athletics had to legislate urgently. In January 2020, the global body bans personalized prototypes and requires that all shoes be commercialized at least four months before a competition. Sole thickness is limited to 40 millimeters for the marathon, 25 millimeters for track races.
These rules attempt to preserve sporting equality, but they also institutionalize the technological revolution. Henceforth, records are tacitly divided into two eras: before and after 2017. World Athletics doesn’t officially admit it, but performances accomplished with and without carbon plates now belong to distinct universes.
The institutional reaction reveals embarrassment. Rather than banning this technology as it had done for swimming suits in 2010, World Athletics chooses to regulate it. A capitulation disguised as regulation that confirms the victory of research laboratories over training tracks.
The running shoe industry has transformed. Nike, which had taken a three-year lead with its Vaporfly, sees its competitors catch up and then surpass its technology. Adidas launches the Adizero Adios Pro, Asics releases the Metaspeed Sky, New Balance offers the FuelCell RC Elite. The global market for competitive running shoes, estimated at 1.2 billion dollars, is entirely restructured around this race for innovation.
For brands, the stakes go beyond sport. A marathon victory with their shoes on the winner’s feet represents millions of euros in marketing returns. Nike thus sponsored Kipchoge’s Breaking2 project for several tens of millions of dollars — an investment largely paid back through subsequent sales. The podium becomes a commercial laboratory.
Amateurs Caught in the Technological Spiral
The impact is not limited to elites. In popular marathons, average times have dropped noticeably since 2019. The 2023 Berlin Marathon shows an average men’s time 4 minutes lower than 2018. Women gain an average of 3 minutes. A collective improvement that owes nothing to collective training but everything to democratized equipment.
This performance inflation redefines amateur hierarchies. Runners now invest 200 to 300 euros in a pair of shoes to gain a few minutes. An arms race that divides athletics clubs between the equipped and the non-equipped. Sporting equality comes at a steep price.
Race organizers attempt to adapt. The Boston Marathon toughened its entry criteria in 2023, anticipating the performance inflation linked to equipment. Other events explore creating separate categories according to shoes worn — a technological segregation that says much about the ambient unease.
For sports physiologists, this evolution complicates assessing the real progress of athletes. How to distinguish improvement from training from the effect of technology? Performance centers now use standardized tests with reference shoes to measure intrinsic gains for runners. Sports science must invent new protocols to separate the human from their prosthetics.
Athletics Loses Its Technological Innocence
This transformation of athletics is not isolated. In swimming, polyurethane suits enabled 43 world records in 2009 before being banned. In cycling, aerodynamic positioning and lenticular wheels revolutionized time trial performances. High-level sport gradually becomes a technological laboratory where innovation takes priority over physical condition.
The difference with athletics lies in its symbolic status. Running remains the most universal sporting activity, the one that seems most “pure”. The idea that equipment could fundamentally modify performance conflicts with this perception. Unlike Formula 1, where technology is part of the spectacle, athletics cultivated the illusion of natural performance.
This technological innocence shatters. Current records are no longer comparable to those from previous decades. Jesse Owens ran in spiked leather shoes. Carl Lewis wore nylon spikes. Usain Bolt had technical shoes, but without a carbon plate. Each generation redefines the limits of the possible with the tools of its era, but never has the jump been so brutal.
Nostalgia for a “pure” sport obscures this reality: technology has always transformed athletics. The difference lies in the speed and scale of change. Previous developments spread over decades. The carbon plate revolutionized the marathon in two years.
World Athletics seeks a delicate balance between innovation and tradition. But this balance increasingly resembles an untenable position: how to preserve the spirit of a sport when its substance is transformed by technology?
When Equipment Becomes the True Runner
Carbon plate shoes question our very conception of performance. If two minutes of difference come down to equipment, what exactly does a record measure? The physiological capacity of the athlete or their access to the best technologies? Does the marathon ranking become that of research laboratories?
This question extends far beyond athletics. In all domains where human performance is measured, technology redefines standards. Surgeons operate with robots that multiply their precision. Airline pilots rely on automatisms that compensate for their limitations. Traders use algorithms faster than their reflexes.
The boundary between human capacity and technological assistance blurs. Athletics, supposedly the last bastion of “pure” performance, joins this gray zone. Future records will say as much about the evolution of materials as about that of human physiology. A mutation that transforms the athlete into a cyborg without them realizing it.
This hybridization raises immediate practical questions. Should competitions be separated according to authorized equipment? How to compare performances between eras? The governing bodies of sport explore these avenues without obvious consensus. The urgency of deciding runs up against the absence of clear vision.
The multiplication of categories threatens sport’s universality. If each technological innovation creates a new class of competition, sport fragments into incomparable pieces. Athletics risks losing its foundational simplicity: one person, one track, one stopwatch.
The Future Runs Faster Than Legs
One certainty emerges: carbon plate shoes are only the beginning. Research laboratories work on even more performing materials, integrated sensors, real-time optimization systems. The next technological revolution is already being prepared in the R&D centers of equipment manufacturers.
The sub-two-hour marathon, a fantasy of runners for decades, becomes a technical formality. Not through improvement of human condition, but through improvement of its accessories. This reality questions as much as it fascinates: in a world where technology augments the human, what remains to measure that is specifically human?
Athletics discovers what other sports learned before it: technology doesn’t complete performance, it redefines it. Records no longer measure only the speed of legs but the efficiency of laboratories. A revolution that transforms champions into unwitting beta-testers.
This evolution poses an existential question to sport: does it want to measure human excellence or technological innovation? The answer will determine athletics’ future. Between tradition and modernity, between purity and performance, between man and machine, the choice is no longer technical. It is philosophical.
The two-hour marathon approaches in great strides. But it will say little about the one who runs it. It will speak mostly of the one who designed his shoes.