The Magic Shoes Era of distance running seemed to reach a fresh tipping point (there will probably be more) on the last weekend of April in London, when two men finished the London Marathon in less than two hours’ time: First Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe in 1:59:30, and, 11 seconds later, Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha in 1:59:41. Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda finished in 2:00:28, a third man under the late Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum’s previous world record of 2:00:35. World records can arrive unexpectedly (Bob Beamon’s shocking long jump at the 1968 Olympics being the archetype, but not the only example, of this powerful suddenness), or inevitably. The two-hour marathon had become the latter, which is mind-bending, but here we are. The marathon record had dropped nearly three-and-a-half minutes since the introduction of the first so-called super shoe nine years ago.
Seven years had passed since Eluid Kipchoge’s 1:59:40 Nike-engineered exhibition in Vienna, where the carnival of pacers and laser-guided timing lights was center-staged and the (historically talented) runner made into something of a living Waymo, and it all seemed like an example of what could be manufactured, rather than achieved (you can debate the level of distinction here, but there is absolutely a distinction). In London, Sawe and Kejelcha went under two hours (and Sawe went under Kipchoge) in an actual competition, putting a genuine digit one at the front of the marathon record for the first time. It was shocking, although not surprising; a when moment, not an if moment.
But nevertheless, it was a moment. Running and track and field are numbers-centric sports, probably the most numbers-centric of all the sports, frequently to such a degree that competition becomes subsumed by those numbers. To what extent this is a limiting factor in the sport’s growth as a spectator/content enterprise is very much open to debate (and very much debated). But in the decade-long super shoes era, which has been centered on long distance road racing and marathon, but also spilled into track and field, although to a lesser and fuzzier degree, the force of numbers has become something more existential.
Sabastian Sawe (KEN) celebrates as crosses the finish line to win the Elite Men Race and break the Marathon World Record in under two hours with an official time of 01:59:30 during the TCS London Marathon on Sunday 26th April 2026. Photo: Bob Martin for London Marathon Events For further information: media@londonmarathonevents.co.uk
Bob Martin for London Marathon Events/Bob Martin for London Marathon Events
Step back. Super Shoes 101 is basically this: Running shoe (and spike, but mostly shoe) manufacturers have in the last decade sped up the customary developmental pace of more efficient footwear. This is not a new thing, in concept: Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis wore different shoes. (As did you and your father). But technology leaped forward (not just in running, duh; you have a computer in your pocket) in the mid-2010s with the development of foam and carbon plate technology, which has enabled swift advances in performance. There are other factors: Advances in training, pacing and “fueling” (love that word, which can hint at all manner of skullduggery, fairly or otherwise). Plus, it’s a deeply complicating factor that a 2021 study by Wouter Hoogkamer and Laura Healey in Footwear Science showed that not all runners are helped -- or affected -- equally by the advances in shoe tech; something that is also true of training itself, but less nefarious in that context.)
Simply phrased: Times got much faster, sometimes in bulk, and fans and keepers of the sport became uncomfortable. Pearls have been clutched into dust, not without some cause. Veteran journalist Toni Reavis, who has written more and more wisely about distance running than anyone I know, wrote about the record assault after London, and in that piece also quoted Australian Olympian Chris Wardlaw, who competed at the 1976 and ’80 Olympics and was the Australian head track and field coach at the 2000 Games: “I don’t want to be seen as a dinosaur creeping out of my grave screaming at people,” Wardlaw told Australia’s Wide World of Sports. “But to me [the shoes] distort what the true meaning of the sport should be. I don’t think we really know what could have been achieved without these shoes... Anybody who knows maths would say there’s been a jump here that has to be explained more by technology than human endeavor.”
OK. Fair. This is the integrity argument that underpins almost any discussion of this topic. It goes like this: Super shoes have undercut the purity of the sport. People are running too fast, because they’re wearing engines on their feet that make their bodies perform better. Well, the shoes have done something, that’s for sure. But I don’t think this is about integrity at all, or certainly not in total. I think it’s about a far more powerful metric: Legacies. The super shoes have not just flipped 10 pages forward in some mythical record book, they’ve rendered the previous 10 pages suddenly less meaningful more swiftly than would have otherwise been possible -- a lurch in the sport’s matrix. My god, Frank Shorter won the ’72 gold medal in Munich in 2:12:19 and birthed the First Running Boom and what does that time mean now that Sabastian Sawe has run so much faster? Or that on the women’s side, Ruth Chepngetich of Kenya ran a world record 2:09:56 in Chicago in 2024. Poor Frank.
Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich reacts after winning the Elite Women’s 2021 Bank of America Chicago Marathon on October 10, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. - Reigning world champion Ruth Chepngetich of Kenya made a triumphant US debut on by winning the women’s title at the 43rd Chicago Marathon. Chepngetich won in an unofficial time of 2hrs 22mins 31secs to defeat American runner-up Emma Bates by 1:49 with another Sara Hall, also of the United States, third in 2:27:19. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP) (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
Just one example. And two warring forces are at work. One, sports fans -- not just fans of running and track and field -- are deeply protective of the competitive rectitude of their games. Running purists concluded that Sawe’s time in London -- while, again, expected -- was just too fast, too soon, because of the tech gremlins that made it possible. It’s just not right. (Here, the running community writ large has almost universally pointed to swimming’s international governing body’s decision at the start of 2010 to ban the full body polyurethane suits --they were called “super suits,” of course, and records called “suit records"-- that competitors had used to lay waste to the sport’s record books. At the time FINA said, “No swimmer shall be permitted to use or wear any device or swimsuit that may aid his speed, buoyancy, or endurance during a competition.” Done. Running went in a different direction, choosing to regulate rather than ban, which, after a lot of legalese, gets you a two-hour marathon.)
It is worth noting here that the running and track communities have had more animated conversations about technological doping than walks-like-a-duck examples of apparent -- but unproven -- actual, chemical doping. This is more fraught territory, but the sport is full of cases where a performance or a timeline of improvement was just too good to be true, but whatever. Shrug. It all goes underground. Super Shoes are not hiding anything, in fact, they are advertising it all, because, marketing. Chemical doping is something you hide.
Okay. As a lifelong squirmer with certain performances, had to say that.
Two, as powerful as those protective instincts are, as fierce as that leap to protect integrity, fans are also deeply resilient and accepting of generational changes that alter the arc of sports and displace their heroes on various lists, in record books and on contrived Mount Rushmores. The pearl clutching is genuine, but also performative, because sports fans really do get it. They are good at separating what’s been overridden from what endures. Times are just times. Records are just records. Legacies are more powerful than either one. Frank Shorter’s Wikipedia page, while criminally short, is weightier than Sabastian Sawe’s London victory, and for now, more meaningful. (We’ll see how long the record goes and how quickly).
There was once a football player named Don Hutson, who played 11 seasons in the NFL from 1935-'45, all with the Green Bay Packers. Hutson was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and played at Alabama before joining the Packers and he is widely considered to be the first great wide receiver in professional football. He caught 488 passes in those 11 seasons, and was the first NFL player to accumulate 1,000 receiving yards (despite the season being just 11 games long); he was fast and strong, with exceptional agility and strong hands -- a unicorn. Hutson played when passing was mostly -- not entirely -- a second option behind rushing from scrimmage, and catching footballs was a wildly dangerous vocation because defenders were permitted to inflict harm up and down the field, including when receivers were what we now call “defenseless.”
That began to change in 1978, when Hutson had been retired for three decades, with the first implementation of a rule limiting downfield contact. Of course, in the ensuing nearly five decades, there has been a cascade of passing-friendly rules that have done far more damage to Don Hutson’s records than Frank Shorter’s. *Yes, I hear the argument that rules changes are not artificial enhancements that make the human body work better. Or are they? Ask any wide receiver who glides across the middle of a defense how he runs bereft of fear. Upshot: Hutson’s career total of 7,991 yards ranks only 121st in NFL history, right behind A.J. Brown and George Kittle, who remain active. Most of those in front of Hutson played after rule changes.
Nevertheless, Hutson’s legacy is rock solid. He was named to the NFL’s 50th, 75th and 100th anniversary teams (and will be on the 125th and 150th) and was a charter member of both of the NFL and College Football Halls of Fame. Players became bigger, faster, stronger; the game’s emphasis and geometry shifted to lessen the impact of his measurables. Yet he endures.
Legacies require an elasticity that can survive all forms of athletic evolution: Equipment, training, technology. In April of 2022, then-podcaster J.J. Redick responded to a comment that NBA Hall of Fame point guard Bob Cousy once had 28 assists in a game by saying, “Well, he was being guarded by plumbers and firemen.” This was a core argument framing the lesser athleticism -- and more proletarian lifestyles -- of mid-20th-century athletes, tarted up for a modern audience, and for laughs. Funny! The substance of the dig is fair enough. On the other hand, in his time, Cousy was a transcendent point guard, and that status has survived the passage of time and Redick’s comedy.
For all of track and field’s (and running’s) worship of seconds and centimeters, the sport is almost universally protective of past athletes whose records are long gone, or who never set records in the first place. Shorter. Jim Ryun. Bob Hayes. Allyson Felix. The sport derives a strength from records, to be sure: Bolt in Beijing, Rudisha in London, Karsten Warholm in Tokyo (my goodness), Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone frequently, Mondo Duplantis frequently. But also from the visual force of competition -- Cole Hocker getting through on the rail in Paris. It is more than numbers, even if numbers matter.
Aug 6, 2024; Paris Saint-Denis, France; Cole Hocker (USA) makes his move for the lead past Jakob Ingebrigtsen (NOR) to win gold and set a new Olympic record in the menís 1500m final during the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games at Stade de France. Mandatory Credit: Andrew Nelles-USA TODAY Sports
Andrew Nelles-USA TODAY Sports
Let’s be sensible, here: Technology will continue to impose its power on the sport (and all sports; how would Bob Gibson have felt about automated ball-and-strike calls?). In sports evolution, we always feel like we have crossed the Rubicon, only to cross another. Those who saw Jordan did not imagine Wemby. Change always gets baked in, history always survives. The shoes are too fast. But it’s going to be okay. This too shall pass. It always does.
Tim Layden is writer-at-large for NBC Sports. He was previously a senior writer at Sports Illustrated for 25 years.
