When Ethiopian Abebe Bikila broke the world marathon record in the 1960 Olympics, he ran the race barefoot.
He hadn’t initially set out to do so but the shoes he bought for the race gave him blisters so he decided to run unshod. Still, he finished with a time of two hours, 15 minutes and 16 seconds.
The first running shoes were made of leather, and looked very much like a man’s dress shoe, only with spikes at the bottom.
An English company called J.W. Foster and Sons (now known as Reebok) founded in 1890, made leather spikes worn by British athletes. Among them was Harold Abrahams, the 1924 Olympic 100-meter champion, who was the inspiration for the film “Chariots of Fire.”
Rubber materials weren’t used until 1917 when the process of vulcanization was developed. Shoemakers then learned to employ heat to fuse rubber and cloth together. They were called sneakers because the rubber sole allowed the wearer to walk around without being heard.
In the 1920s, brothers Adi and Rudolf Dassler started a sports shoe business in a small German town.
The siblings drifted apart and set up rival shops eventually. Rudolf launched Puma while Adi opened Adidas in the late 1940s. In the 1950s, Adidas began using suede instead of leather for running shoes, such as in the Gazelle.
Also in the 1950s, University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman teamed up with one of his former athletes, Phil Knight, to start a company called Blue Ribbon Sports.
Bowerman and Knight met Kihachiro Onitsuka, then Japan’s top sports shoemaker, with the intention of distributing Onitsuka shoes in the United States.
Eventually, Blue Ribbon Sports became Nike and Onitsuka became Asics.
In 1971, Bowerman supposedly used his wife’s waffle iron to experiment on rubber to create a grippier and more lightweight track shoes, leading to the introduction of the “Moon Shoe” and the “Waffle Trainer.” Nike and the swoosh logo were born.
The introduction of lighter, more comfortable running shoes by different brands may have helped bring on the running boom of the 1970s. It was also then when the shoe company called Brooks that was founded in 1914 turned its attention to running.
In the late 70s and early 80s Brooks launched the first shoes that controlled pronation, which is said to cause injuries among runners.
In the late 80s to the 90s, Nike began using air bubble technology in their midsole whereas Asics began using gels to increase cushioning and shock absorption.
From rubber, manufacturers began using the significantly lighter EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate) foam, the primary material used by Hoka, which was founded in 2009.
In 2015 Adidas introduced the Boost foam made of TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) material. TPU particles are expanded to form closed cells around tiny pockets of air, which results in good energy return.
However, it was not until 2017 when the first “super shoe” was born with the introduction of the Nike Vaporfly 4 percent. It was considered a “super shoe” because, based on tests, it was shown to improve running economy by an average of four percent.
The Vaporfly was notable for its high stack height.
Instead of using TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) which was popular then, the Vaporfly used what Nike called the ZoomX foam which is actually a bouncy Pebax foam. Pebax is a trademarked and patented variation of PEBA (Polyether Block Amide).
The midsole also featured a stiff carbon fiber plate which acts like a spring that pushes the runner forward.
Once the elite runners began winning in the shoes, questions arose on whether the shoes should be banned for giving undue advantage to its users. The argument goes that races are supposed to measure the mettle of the athlete, not the technology they wear on their feet.
In 2020, the World Athletics, the governing body of track and field, imposed a ban on any shoe with a sole thicker than 40 millimeters.
The body also announced that any shoe used in competition must have been available for purchase on the retail market for a period of four months. This effectively banned the use of prototypes in competition.
Of course, these measures do not affect recreational runners who can use any shoe, regardless of configuration.
Not surprisingly, cutting edge technology comes with a hefty price tag.
In the Philippines, some of these carbon plated shoes retail at around P17,000, which is more than a month’s salary for minimum wage earners. Yet, the shoes are sometimes sold out hours after initial release.
With the evolution of running shoes, running is no longer the cheap and accessible sport that it used to be. It makes me wonder how an Abebe Bikila would figure in this technology driven milieu.