Nike set up a similar stunt for women in the mile. She broke her WR but not a legal WR due to male pacers and spikes used.
Her PR coming in to this was 4:07. I had a hard time believing she’d be able to knock off nearly 2 seconds per lap, even with all the pacers and gear.
I think the pacers didn thelp correctly? They were by her side and not breaking wind in front of her like in breaking 2
After Breaking 2, I’m not really interested in what NIKE does “in the lab”
It only counts if it’s done in competition
YMMV
It’s almost like the Running equivalent of taking a rocket car to Bonneville, or wherever they do those things
“Yeah, that’s fast, but … really?”
I wouldn’t be the least but surprised if Nike botched this whole thing by outfitting her in a bunch of new gear and tech. How comfortable did she look taking the field? She obviously knew she wasn’t going to hit it by her expression as soon as you saw her.
She looked totally out of her element.
Now I’m not saying it’s likely she would have gotten under 4 anyway, but the fact that with all that “assistance” she was basically half a second from her record suggests to me that the assistance was actually a slight hindrance.
Of course at this margin of error, how well she slept etc is going to have an impact, to say nothing of her health maybe being a little off.
There is also controversy on how accurate the timing was
Ya, I’ve seen that. Who knows there. But I think there is some irony in how often they pointed out how minimalist her upbringing was (she ran barefoot!) to suddenly being the center of attention and stacked up with all kinds of new gear (nothing new for race day?) that she didn’t use throughout her career.
I dunno… someone who thrived running unencumbered suddenly running in a skin tight near full body suit probably feels different than they normally do.
Kipchoge went on an epic run through the city with the boys. She was treated like a robot under a magnifying glass of lights and cameras.
