If you have a gym pass or access to a treadmill, here is an experiment to try with caution – or, safer still, restrict it to a thought experiment. Put the speed up to a whisker under 12 miles per hour – assuming, of course, that it lets you, as many home treadmills don’t dare go that fast. And then run for your life, preferably with a big pile of pillows behind for when you fly off the back.
Now imagine sustaining that pace for 26.2 miles. Because that is the speed at which the Ethiopian athlete Tigist Assefa destroyed the women’s world marathon record in Berlin, taking more than two minutes off the previous record and finishing in 2 hours 11 minutes and 53 seconds.
Yet 2023 has been the year when the extraordinary has become almost ordinary, at least in women’s distance running. In June, the Kenyan Faith Kipyegon smashed the 1500m and 5,000m world records – and, for good measure, destroyed the mile record a month later. This month, the Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay broke that 5,000m record again.
No one can deny that technology has played a huge part. In 2017, Nike officially launched a peculiar-looking, thick-soled running shoe called the Zoom Vaporfly 4% – so named because it was reported to provide a 4% increase in energy return for the runner, meaning less energy is needed to sustain a certain speed. Independent testing later backed up this claim. It was to mark the beginning of a race between brands vying to create the fastest shoe, and then selling it to the amateur market – which they have done with great success.
Manufacturers have thrown money at their R&D departments to catch up. The latest salvo was fired on Sunday when Assefa set her record while wearing a pair of Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1s, Adidas’s lightest shoe yet, a limited number of which were available through a special draw this week at £400. They last just one marathon.
Environmental implications aside, for the running purist, the existence of supershoes has devalued the pursuit of records. While technology may always advance, they say, such is this step-change that it renders new times entirely meaningless.
But shoes are not the only new tech. There is also wave light technology – small flashing lights placed into the side of athletics tracks that can be set to a specific pace. It means that athletes gunning for a track record know they are on target, lap after grinding lap. Some complain that human pacers are better, others that any pacing at all is “against the spirit of the sport”.
“Technology across so many sports gets better as time passes,” says a former top British marathon runner, Richard Nerurkar. “And that’s what happened in athletics. We just have to accept that, and celebrate the achievements of these athletes, who are now able to run even faster because of technology.”
But to put performances (and times) purely down to shoes is to do athletes a disservice. You can’t just put on these shoes and become a world-beater. Elite runners train hard, month after month, year after year to reach new heights. And in fact, height may be the relevant word when it comes to east African dominance of the sport: most Ethiopians and Kenyans live and train at high altitude, where the lack of oxygen in the air forces the body to increase its red blood cell count. It means that when they return to sea level, they usually find performance is improved for a short period. That’s why elite athletes from around the world go to high-altitude training camps when preparing for big races.
But why are so many women’s records being broken now? It has been decades since east African runners took up near-permanent residence on the marathon podiums of the world. An entire industry is now devoted to analysing and selling the “Kenyan lifestyle” to amateur runners, but most of this has revolved around the name recognition achieved by the male greats – Eliud Kipchoge, Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele. Until now, the women have largely played second fiddle.
Much, however, is changing. Nerurkar, who also co-founded the Great Ethiopian Run with Gebrselassie, and spends a lot of time in the country, points out that Ethiopia now has a female president, as well as a female athletics federation chief. “It’s interesting to trace the development of Ethiopian running,” he says. “In 1992 and again in 2000, Derartu Tulu won the Olympic 10,000m title. In that decade, there were very few female distance runners in Ethiopia compared with men. But I think what we’ve seen in Ethiopia over the last 20 years is perhaps not an explosion but so many more women taking part, and training seriously.”
The Kenyan journalist Evelyn Watta agrees. “If you look at the political landscape in Kenya and Ethiopia, now we have more women in parliament and more women represented,” she says. “It’s a very big statement and it certainly plays a role. We now have female athletics coaches coming up, and female administrators, too, which certainly helps.
“Simple things such as discussing periods within Kenyan sporting society was taboo, but not any more. Even saying that an athlete is pregnant is a new thing, because it was very common in media circles to say: ‘Oh she’s injured.’ You’d ask: ‘What kind of injury?’ and they would say: ‘Oh, a female injury.’ So I think some small things are changing, and giving women the power they needed to show their best when they run.”
Another factor – especially in the marathon – is the age of athletes, which is dropping fast. “When I started my career, the marathon was almost for retirees from track and field,” says Watta. “They would do the 800m, maybe scale up to 5,000m and 10,000m, then the next thing would be the marathon and that’s the end. Now, you are seeing much younger athletes going into the marathon. They are still strong, they are fresh, and I think that’s also playing into the faster times.” She says that the Kenyan runner Kelvin Kiptum was just 22 when he ran the fastest ever marathon debut in Valencia last year.
Why are they starting younger? Because, simply, the rewards are greater. These days, the top runners can get paid six-figure sums to compete in major marathons. Road running prize money has not only equalised – many used to offer lower prizes for women – but also gone up quite substantially. The winners at Berlin took home $50,000 (about £41,250) in prize money, and that’s before bonuses for breaking records and from their brand sponsors.
When Roger Bannister finally broke the four-minute mile in 1954, he remarked: “Après moi, le déluge.” He was right – within weeks, his record was broken. In 2023, some might say it’s more: ”Après les chaussures, le déluge.” But equally, some have questioned whether it is less tech-enhancement and more pharmaceutical-enhancement.
Certainly in recent years, a number of prominent Kenyans have been banned, including the former London marathon champions Jemima Sumgong and Daniel Wanjiru. But none of the current world record-holders have ever failed a drugs test, and certainly the way Kipyegon’s fellow athletes enthusiastically celebrated all her three world records with her suggested that they are confident she has done it the right way. There will always be sceptics, but for Watta, it is a golden age for east African women in the sport: “I know about technology and everything else, but deep down, as someone who’s really followed athletics, I’m excited because it shows that the talent is true. When I saw Assefa’s time, I was pinching myself. I knew this would one day happen, but I didn’t expect it to be in my lifetime.” And the craziest thing of all is that the spate of world records may not be finished yet.
