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Is this the era of Nike dominance? A major shift in the shoe market

Ekiden and shoes have now become inseparable.

When Nike released the Vaporfly 4% in 2017, a so-called thick-soled shoe with a built-in carbon fiber plate, athletes’ times improved dramatically, and the number of Nike users increased accordingly.

Even if the uniforms are made by another company, there is no choice. Each university negotiates with the manufacturer, and more and more schools are wearing Nike shoes in races.

This book is not intended for readers who are core runners, so when explaining about thick-soled shoes, it does not mean that runners are faster because the soles are thicker.

So why does the sole have to be so thick? Consider that it’s because it needs to be that thick to house the carbon fiber plate that provides forward propulsion.

In 2017, during the “pre-Vaporfly” era, there were 36 Nike users in the Hakone Ekiden (Asics was in the lead that year with 67 users).

However, in 2018, the first tournament after the release of the Vaporfly, Nike won 58 votes, followed by Asics with 54, and Nike finally took over as the leading party. It was a change of government.

By 2023, Nike had 154 employees, Adidas had 28, and Asics had 24, showing that a major market shift has occurred in just five years.

A shoe survey of all runners who participated in the qualifying round

What about the Hakone qualifying round, which has a larger number of participants? I was surprised and amused when I read “The Hakone Ekiden Guide: 2023 + New Year Ekiden!” (Pia) because the shoes of all the runners who participated in the qualifying round held in October 2022 were investigated. This is a lot of work and a huge amount of knowledge.

As expected, most of the athletes were wearing Nike’s Vaporfly and Alphafly, but there were also some athletes wearing shoes such as Adidas’s “ADIZERO BOSTON 10” (Tokyo University of Science, Nakayama Teru) and Asics’s classic “SORTIEMAGIC RP6” (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Iwai Ryoma) (it feels more appropriate to call them students rather than athletes).

Although this is a great product, it is hardly the best shoe for the half marathon distance, as it does not have a carbon fiber plate built in. Why would they choose a shoe that they would wear for training?

According to Nishimoto-san of EKIDEN NEWS, “Maybe he forgot his race shoes and ran in his warm-up shoes?” If he really did forget, it would be a bit funny, but what is the truth?