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research article

Influence of advanced footwear technology on sub-2 hour marathon and other top running performances

Arderiu, Andreu
•
de Fondeville, Raphael  
March 26, 2022
Journal Of Quantitative Analysis In Sports

In 2019, Eliud Kipchoge ran a sub-two hour marathon wearing Nike's Alphafly shoes. Despite being the fastest marathon time ever recorded, it wasn't officially recognized as race conditions were tightly controlled to maximize his success. Besides, Kipchoge's use of Alphafly shoes was controversial, with some experts claiming that they might have provided an unfair competitive advantage. In this work, we assess the potential influence of advanced footwear technology and the likelihood of a sub-two hour marathon in official races, by studying the evolution of running top performances from 2001 to 2019 for long distances ranging from 10 km to marathon. The analysis is performed using extreme value theory, a field of statistics dealing with analysis of rare events. We find a significant evidence of performance-enhancement effect with a 10% increase of the probability that a new world record for marathon-men discipline is set in 2021. However, results suggest that achieving a sub-two hour marathon in an official race in 2021 is still very unlikely, and exceeds 10% probability only by 2025.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1515/jqas-2021-0043
Web of Science ID

WOS:000793673900005

Author(s)
Arderiu, Andreu
de Fondeville, Raphael  
Date Issued

2022-03-26

Publisher

WALTER DE GRUYTER GMBH

Published in
Journal Of Quantitative Analysis In Sports
Volume

18

Issue

1

Start page

73

End page

86

Subjects

Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods

•

Mathematical Methods In Social Sciences

•

athletics performance

•

footwear technology

•

running time records

•

statistical analysis

•

vaporfly

•

athletics

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
STAT  
Available on Infoscience
June 6, 2022
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/188253
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