Nike PR stunt or giant leap forward? Faith Kipyegon aims to make history

The Guardian

13 hours ago

Just before 8pm local time in Paris on Thursday, Faith Kipyegon will play her favourite pre-race song, Shakira's Try Everything, to pump her up. Then, after listening to the hit from Zootropolis, she will try to chase down the impossible.
The 31-year-old from Kenya is already a three-time Olympic champion, the world mile record holder, and arguably the greatest female middle-distance runner in history. And now she intends a spectacular encore, by becoming the first woman to crash through the four-minute mile barrier.
Every scientific instinct suggests it won't happen - at least not yet. Kipyegon's world record for the mile is 4min 07.64sec, which means she will have to find nearly eight seconds. In a sport decided by fractions, that is a chasm.
Yet Faith certainly has faith that she can emulate Sir Roger Bannister, who was the first man to achieve the feat in 1954. 'You can't limit yourself,' she says. 'You have to dream, to go for that risk and just believe in yourself in everything you do. We all have the same dreams. And what a man can do, a woman can do.'
They are powerful words. But biology may deliver a blunt reality check. As the top track and field coach Steve Magness points out, to be capable of a sub-four mile an athlete needs to be capable of running the 800m in around 1min 53sec – four seconds quicker than Kipyegon has ever gone.
While she will be armed with several new pieces of kit, including a special aerodynamic skinsuit with '3D-printed aeronodes', which draws on similar technology used by British Cycling and British Skeleton when they dominated the Summer and Winter Olympics, it is unlikely to make a substantial difference.
One scientist involved in the British Cycling skinsuits told the Guardian they were never used by Team GB in track and field because the benefits did not translate. 'I expect the suit to have negligible effect. At world-class level, we'd expect a 10% reduction in drag to have around a nine times greater performance advantage for cycling compared to running.'
So what else is there? Well, Kipyegon has new super spikes, which Nike says are lighter and more propulsive than ever before. Even so, they are unlikely to be worth more than a second over a mile.
That brings us to drafting. When Kipyegon runs she will have a team of pacers surrounding her to block out the wind and make her run faster. But how much faster? According to the scientist, it is hard to see anything more than a two to three second improvement from 'perfect' drafting in real-world conditions. That would still leave Kipyegon several seconds short of her dream.
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Another leading sports scientist, Ross Tucker, reckons that another option to gain around 0.5 secs might be for Kipyegon to run in lane six to create a 'circle' or bubble around her, rather than a line. 'So she'd benefit from drafting to the front, front left and front right,' he says. That, acknowledges Tucker, would still not be enough, but he wonders whether Nike might yet have another trick up its sleeve. Perhaps. Or maybe the reality is more prosaic. There is no magic bullet, yet, to get Kipyegon all the way to 3min 59sec.
Certainly Nike is not making the sort of bullish noises it did when it funded Eliud Kipchoge's first attempt at a sub-two hour marathon in 2017. Back then, Nike also gave detailed specifics when it came to the improvement from its super shoes. This time around its experts have been far more vague.
Still, a question remains. Would Nike really be doing this if Kipyegon didn't have a shot at the impossible – even if it won't count as a world record under World Athletics' rules as it is not an official race? It all makes for a highly intriguing four minutes of sport. So what is it? Nike PR stunt or groundbreaking moment for women? Kipyegon is about to face her moment of truth.