Nike Exec: Vaporfly Shoes ‘Totally Fair, Assuming Everyone Else Is Also Wearing Vaporfly Shoes’
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Responding to rumors that track and field’s governing body might ban Nike’s Vaporfly shoes for use in competition, a Nike spokesman suggested yesterday that such a move would be misguided.
“The Vaporfly shoe is totally fair,” said Mike Brady, Nike’s North American Executive Vice President of Scuttlebutt Management, “assuming that everyone else is also wearing Vaporfly shoes, which they totally could be if they would just buy themselves a pair.”
“Two pairs,” he added. “They should buy two pairs. Three. Just in case.”
The shoes in question, which pair stiff carbon plates with a special midsole foam, yield a measurable and significant benefit over traditional running shoes, several sources have confirmed. It’s a benefit that Nike itself trumpets in its advertising and marketing for the shoe—and one that will vanish when everyone is running in Nike Vaporfly shoes, Brady said.
“As world champion Eliud Kipchoge said so eloquently in a recent interview, ‘it’s the person who is running, not the shoe,’” Brady told reporters at the company’s Beaverton, Oregon headquarters. “The only thing the Vaporfly does—and this is important, so listen carefully—is to help runners go significantly faster than they could in non-Vaporfly shoes. That’s it.”
“We make no apologies for that,” said Brady, “and we maintain our stance that the Nike Vaporfly confers absolutely zero advantage during a race, just as long as every other runner in that particular race is wearing Nike Vaporfly shoes too.”
“That,” he added, “is the very definition of a level playing field.”
Asked whether such a ratcheting up would essentially cancel out the Vaporfly’s benefits, leaving runners, collectively, back where they started, the only difference being a surge in sales for Nike, Brady coughed, consulted his notes, and then pointed behind the reporters, shouting, “Hey, is that Alberto Salazar?”
When the reporters, seeing nothing behind them, turned back around, Brady was gone.
Reports that his escape was aided by Nike Vaporfly shoes could not be verified.
