I'm wearing the real Team USA Olympic uniforms with one of the world's fastest super shoes and we're going to cut it in half because what's inside this shoe is part of a huge debate happening in sports right now. The question is, when does sports gear get so good that it's actually CHEATING? There's a ton of cool gear that's banned from sports from making athletes too good, like swimsuits that make a swimmer's body too streamlined, or gloves that make a receiver's hands too grippy, or bats that let a player hit the ball too to hard, or shoes that make a runner too freaking fast.
They call it "tech doping," using physical gear to gain an unfair advantage. In this video, I'm going to show you the banned technology that you won't see in the Olympics. .
. oh that's grippy. .
. and the cutting edge tech that you will see that's on the very edge of what's allowed. You might be thinking, "hold on, no gear should give athletes an advantage!
" But we don't run barefoot anymore. We don't swim naked. We use tech to play sports and that tech keeps getting better, pushing forward what humans can do.
So. . .
where's the line? That's what I really want to figure out. This debate is about way more than sports.
In every part of our lives, technology pushes humans forward and it's up to us to decide what do we want from it. This video is about that question. Let me show you the cutting edge of sports technology.
. . MICHAEL PHELPS: "I am wearing the fastest suit in the world and that's a fact.
. . " "the fastest suits in the world" "technological doping.
. . " "it is cheating" "a weekend that changed distance running forever" "Nike's controversial vaporfly shoes" "fueling new controversy over the suits the swimmers are wearing" "surpassing human capabilities.
. . " Today I'm at Nike's test lab in Oregon to show you some of the world's best and most controversial sports equipment.
But first, if you were trying to decide whether to ban something from sports, how would you do it? Here's where to start. First most regulators ask is, it dangerous to athletes or fans or both?
This is the big reason they give for banning steroids but it applies to hardware too. For example, in Major League Baseball they're not allowed to use aluminum bats they have to use wooden ones because aluminum would allow them to hit the ball so fast they might kill people on the field or hurt people in the stands. So if gear greatly increases the risk of injury it might not be allowed.
But most of the cool tech that we're talking about doesn't increase danger, it just makes athletes better. So the next question they ask is, is it against the spirit of the sport? But how do you define that exactly?
Spirit of the sport, it's intentionally vague! So it gets broken up into smaller questions like, can everyone use this tech? Is it fair to record holders?
Does it artificially enhance a player's performance? Let me give you some examples. Try to decide what you think is right before I tell you what the rule-makers chose.
This is the Olympics in 1972. Do you notice anything missing? Nobody's wearing goggles!
Four years later, the Olympics allowed them. You see early adopters start to use them and those athletes start winning. Here's a chart showing swimming records by year.
That's when goggles were allowed. Most people today would say allowing goggles was a good idea but then something new caused another big spike. .
. In 2008, Speedo collaborated with NASA to make this, the LZR racer. This suit was so cool.
The fabric mimicked shark skin with these little channels that let water flow more easily. It had these panels that sucked swimmers bodies into a more streamlined position, and people speculated that the way it trapped air made swimmers float more easily, which Speedo denied. But it was clear this new tech was helping swimmers crush world records.
Athletes were doing things nobody thought was possible. It was awesome. You remember that Olympics when Michael Phelps won more gold medals than any human had ever won in a single Olympics ever?
He was wearing a LZR racer. Is that fair? This new suit made the swimming world lose their minds.
The general manager of the US team said the records shouldn't count. So should this fancy super swimsuit be allowed? Within a year, the swimming governing body voted to ban them.
The swimmers you see at the Olympics now are wearing suits made with only textile fabrics that can only cover this much of their body. I feel mixed about that! We can't see well underwater and our skin isn't textured like sharks but goggles are allowed and these swimsuits aren't but on the other hand we don't allow flippers there's a line somewhere.
It's just not always obvious. . .
like prescription lenses in Olympic shooting. . .
okay or not okay? If you said okay, the regulators agree with you. Olympic shooters are allowed to wear prescription lenses.
They can correct their vision, they just can't enhance it. Or how about this: Sticky glue that makes it easier to catch a football. .
. okay or not okay? The NFL said not okay but grippy gloves are fine.
"How in the world? Oh my goodness! " I love these questions because they get it what we think the whole point is of both sports and technology and of course it's so messy but the messiest of all is the debate about running shoes and a record that was supposed to be impossible to beat.
. . "he has done it!
" Welcome to Nike's test lab! I'm at Nike to answer a question I've been wondering for years. Let me explain.
In 2019 I watched Eliud Kipchoge become the first person ever to run a marathon in under 2 hours. That is 4 minutes and 35 seconds per mile for 26. 2 miles!
Here's what that speed looks like for most people. . .
This was supposed to be impossible but he did it and while the world celebrated Kipchoge's record in professional running all eyes turned to these. He was wearing special prototype shoes built to make him run faster. In fact, studies showed that this design helped runners at the time go 2 to 3% faster than the next fastest shoe and regulators started saying that this shoe threatened the Integrity of the sport.
But why this shoe? If you look back at the history of running shoes you'll see that over the last 100 years they've gotten a lot better than 2-3%. Early running shoes looked like this.
They're basically loafers with spikes! People can run a lot faster in basically any running shoe today. So why was this shoe all of a sudden so controversial?
Let me show you the answer. This is the newest version of that same shoe design and I'm about to cut it open. So this is the successor of what Eliud Kipchoge beat the 2 hour marathon in?
"Yeah It's a culmination of all kinds of technological development. It's a thing of beauty and we're going to destroy it. " There's no chance I can put it through is there?
You could guide me. If I lose a finger, it's my fault. "Uh Lindsay what do you think?
" "Well we do have her on camera saying it will be her fault. . .
" If I cut my finger off, I'm saying it to camera, it's not like Nike's fault. "Sweet Jesus this is fine, come on it's fine, it'll be fine, it'll be fine, it's okay. .
. " While I set up to cut this shoe in half, let me tell you about another company whose tech makes things run better: Shopify. Shopify is a commerce platform that lets anybody start and manage a business.
They have a drag and drop store editor that makes building a store so easy. Incredible stores run on Shopify. And you can sell things across social channels like YouTube and I'm based in the US but I'd want to be able to reach you in other countries too.
Shopify makes it easier to sell across borders with local payment methods and helps with tax compliance with Shopify Markets. they also just launched Shopify Magic which are AI tools designed for business owners. They can help you transform your images by removing or adding new backgrounds or write SEO optimized product descriptions for your store.
I made some hats and sweatshirts as gifts for our Huge If True team and I keep getting comments from people who'd want to buy them, so I'm working on figuring out how I could manufacture them and if I do, I'd sell them on Shopify. And you can do it all on your phone. You have the most powerful tools for growing and managing a business, anywhere.
Shopify makes selling things online easy. If you want a free trial, click the link in my description. Now let's cut that shoe open.
. . Woooo!
Look at this! Lots of companies now make their own version of a super shoe and people say they've changed running sports forever, but how exactly? At a high level, every super shoe today has three key sections: The upper, which holds your foot, the outsole, which hits the ground, and the midsole which mostly determines how much of the energy that a runner exerts down into the ground is returned to boost them into their next stride.
This is called energy return and it's a huge deal in running. Nike's new super shoe specifically maximized energy return by building in a way taller stack of new cushy foam and a carbon fiber plate that acts like a lever springing the runner forward, which outside the shoe looks like this right here. They even included special air pockets for extra bounce.
Before super shoes, a good energy return rate was about 60 to 65%. Now it's more like 80%, way more of the runner's energy that they get to reuse. I wanted to show you what that energy return feels like but to do it Nike didn't just give me their shoes.
They let me try the real team USA Olympic uniforms. So I'm wearing this and this and this and most importantly these. Okay now go away.
. . I feel awesome.
Let's do this. They didn't just test the shoe, they tested me. They analyzed my running style, they showed me how these uniforms deal with sweat, and hardest of all they made me run in 95° heat at 70% humidity.
"Some of your cameras may not work super well in here 'cause they might fog up. What speed would you like to run at today? " Uh I'd like to go fast enough to give you some real information.
. . "I'll just be right outside the window.
So I'll look at you, thumbs up means I can go a little bit faster, thumbs down means a little bit slower. " Okay put me in coach! Yeah I did not fully understand what I was in for.
. . I don't know how to do that.
. . "She wants to go as fast as you'll let her go.
. . " I feel the energy return, it feels like a trampoline on my feet.
. . When Super Shoes were introduced, just like the swimmers with the LZR racer, runners began to crush world records.
Marathon times saw the biggest increase in 50 years. People started complaining that the shoes were giving runners energy, but that's not how "energy return" works. All the energy has to come from the runner, and anyone who runs knows it's not easy.
I'm reaching a point where I can't talk casually anymore. "She's getting hot. She's been running for 2 and a half minutes.
The world's best marathoners can run in this temperature at faster speeds than this for two plus hours. " "If you're up for it, we'll have you go for about six more minutes. " Okay!
"How you feel? So fun right? " That was great.
"You got good sweat going all over the place, beading up over here" Drpping. Look at this. So running shoes that make you faster: okay or not okay?
Regulators decided something in the middle. They tried to restrict how much energy return super shoes could give by implementing a 40 mm foam height limit and saying shoes can't have more than one carbon fiber plate. Kipchoge's shoes barely fit these requirements but they were prototypes which felt unfair so Regulators added a rule saying that all shoes had to be available for anyone to buy at least four 4 months before they were used in competition.
These rules were pretty much aimed at Nike and back then Nike wasn't happy about it. They issued a statement saying the rules would stifle innovation so I asked the head of Nike's sport research lab about it now. Why did Nike feel that way at the time and do you still feel that way now?
"There was a number of reasons we were pushing back and and worrying about stifling innovation. I think it's like just a moral obligation to keep to keep pushing forward. Our goal is not to make the world's fastest athletes faster by putting fans behind them and pushing them down the field.
It's that's not interesting to us. " That's really the key. It's all about pushing the human body forward.
But that brings us to the last big debate about technology in sports: What if the tech that you're debating is part of someone's body? You might remember this guy, Oscar Pistorius. He was the first person to qualify and compete in the Olympics with these.
running blades. This was a moment that got a lot of people talking about what's fair and what's not in sports. You might not know him yet but that's Blake Leeper.
He qualified for the Olympics 8 years after Pistorius but he wasn't allowed to compete. . .
"So I had what the fifth fastest time in the world against able-bodied athletes which qualified me for the Olympic Games and then I was abruptly stopped. I had to take my my case to the Court of Arbitration of Sport. .
. " The Olympics had allowed Pistorius but they now wanted to revisit the rules. Should running blades be allowed?
If you let people wear glasses for shooting, meaning they can correct a disability that they have, aren't prosthetics the same? And how do you decide what's a correction and what's an enhancement? Turns out, tests.
A lot of tests. "They put dots on my blades to see the spring compression to see like what type of energy return are we getting out of the prosthetic legs and how does that compare to somebody who have their legs? " Researchers found that Blake's prosthetic legs made him no faster at sprinting or gave him better endurance but they did make him worse at accelerating and rounding curves.
Then the opponent side argued that prosthetics are lighter and they don't require of the body's oxygen. It was seeming like a tossup but then. .
. "the one thing that they got me on specifically was called the MASH rule, max allowable standing height. " The Olympics didn't use this rule for Pistorius, but now they decided Blake couldn't compete because his blades made him taller than he would be naturally but Blake was born without the bottom part of his legs.
He has never had a full height naturally with his legs. They calculated it using measurements from other parts of his body to tell him what his height would theoretically have been and to make matters worse those calculations were based on only small studies of white and Asian men but the whole idea of using averages for athletes is tricky. Most people's wingspan is roughly their height, but Michael Phelps wingspan is three whole Ines taller than he is.
That's part of what makes him so great. But in the end. .
. "they said this is the rules that're set, we're sorry Blake, but you have to drop your legs by 6 inches. " And changing your height is not the same as changing in your swimsuit.
"I trained at 6'2 my whole life and now I'm 5'9 so I'll go reach or I'll go run or my back went out. And the question, that the million-dollar question is, what's fair and what's not fair? If somebody was born with bad vision and they wear glasses you wouldn't regulate that.
Now I could try to wear glasses, but I don't I don't need glasses! " Really the conversation that we're talking about is a fear or a concern that technology will get so good people on blades will actually outperform everybody, is that what people are really talking about? "I think yeah.
I think that's the conversation that is really at hand. It wasn't me trying to compete. It was the idea of the Pandora's Box that it could potentially open up.
I don't agree with it but I understand. " We have come so far in improving what humans can do. Today we have better nutrition and training and strategy and recovery and of course technology.
The whole point of technology is to make people better, to make our lives easier, to make us more capable, to make things that we never thought were possible come true. But how far and how fast and exactly in what direction technology pushes us is the big debate that we're going to keep on having far beyond sports. "Should we regulate it should we tame it down?
Should we allow it? Should we integrate it? " "I think it's wrong to stop.
I think it's you can say it's unethical to introduce these things to sport. It's unethical to stop inventing and to stop pushing human potential forwards" And personally I can't wait to see what humans are capable of. [Wait for it.
. . ] Welcome to Nike's test lab.
. . That's gonna be the ending!
