The super spikes set to take over the 2024 Olympic Games
You’ve heard of super shoes, but have you heard of super spikes? With the 2024 Olympic Games opening in Paris this weekend, this year is set to be the most significant yet in terms of track and field footwear.
Running spikes themselves are nothing new. Essentially trainers with spikes on the sole for increased grip, they help athletes to turn their legs over faster without slipping when racing on the track or cross-country. But just like the best running shoes, technology has seriously evolved over the past few years when it comes to track spikes, with sports brands able to create lighter and more responsive shoes than ever before. RW caught up with Jose Van der Veen, Global Head of Product Line Management Track & Field at Puma, to talk about how the innovation has grown in recent years and what it means for the 2024 Olympic Games.
What are super spikes?
Loosely modelled on the same formula as top-tier distance shoes, a 2022 paper from a group at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, published in the Sports Medicine journal, suggests that super spikes ‘combine lightweight, compliant, resilient foams (and air pods) with a stiff (nylon/PEBA/carbon-fibre) plate’.
However, while marathon shoes are permitted up to 40mm in stack, from 1 November 2024, World Athletics rules will not permit athletes to wear spikes with a stack height over 20mm. The current regulations allow a 20mm stack height for sprint and hurdle events up to 400m, and a 25mm stack for 800m events and longer distances. Like super shoes, super spikes also have to be available for wider purchase and can only feature one carbon plate.
Even these World Athletics regulations are a recent development, though. Super spike prototypes first started emerging in 2019, says Van der Veen, 'which was obviously a year before the planned Tokyo Olympics'.
'It was like an arms race from all the brands to get super spikes to our sponsored athletes and to develop them,' she says. 'Usually, [we work to] an 18-month plus development lifecycle. However, we were so close to the Tokyo Olympics that we really had to put all hands on deck.'
With the Olympics pushed back to 2021 due to Covid, this gave Puma and other brands more time to 'fine tune things', Van der Veen says, 'So when we went into the 2021 Olympics, we had two super spikes: one focused on the 400m and the other more focused for 200m up to 400m'.
'The interesting thing was that we even had distance runners who were wearing the 400m spike because they really wanted to get the benefits...so they were sacrificing maybe a little bit of the comfort that you would typically need for long distance for being able to wear a super spike.'
The start lines were also mixed, with some brands slower to develop super spikes than others. Now though, three years on, Van der Veen says the 'level playing field has really equalled'.
'All the brands have now caught up and been able to develop their own version of a super spike.'
Puma's focus has since been on widening its offering. 'Obviously, what we had in Tokyo, it worked,' says Van der Veen. 'But we haven't sat still. We really kept pushing the evolution. We've fine tuned the foam and [looked at] how we shave the carbon fibre plate for each specific shoe, and doing more testing with our athletes.
'Now that we come to Paris, we have a wide range of spikes for sprinting, jumping and distance running.'
Indeed, Puma now offers five different Nitro-infused sprint spikes, and four different Nitro-infused jump spikes.
While the brand uses the same Nitro Elite midsole foam in its sprint spikes as its road racing shoes, Van der Veen explains that they have to make the foam harder, 'because you have less stack height' in a spike, while the brand's power plate is harder and stiffer.
Do super spikes work?
While there is plenty of data into the benefits of super shoes, research into the impact of super spikes on performance is not so straight forward. Indeed, the team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst suggest that ‘the short answer... we do not know, and it might be difficult to ever find out’.
This is for a couple of key reasons, they suggest. First off, you can’t wear track spikes on a standard treadmill – the usual method involved in monitoring an individual’s oxygen consumption in regular shoes versus super shoes.
Secondly, in events that are highly aerobic, such as the 10,000m and marathon, performance mainly depends on the rate of metabolic energy consumption – also known as running economy. However, when athletes are running at 400m or lower pace, traditional aerobic running economy measurements will not be valid as the athlete is above their aerobic, steady-state capacity and relying on anaerobic energy production instead. This is hard to quantify accurately.
These researchers have been working alongside Puma, though, says Laura Healey, head of innovation at the brand.
'Basically, when we measure running economy, we can keep the speed the same and measure the athlete's effort,' she explains. 'But we could, in theory, flip that where we keep their effort the same and measure their speed. So that's the approach we take, especially for these mid-distance spikes. We take them to the track and have them do 200m strides at mile effort, and then see if their speeds are increasing.'
The University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers also propose that to determine effectiveness we might just need to rely on comparison of track performances pre- and post- the introduction of super spikes, or, at an individual level, changes in an athlete’s training or race times.
In several years, they also suggest, we can expect performance analyses into the historical development of annual top 20 and top 50 performances, similar to those currently being published for marathon super shoes. And that’s why this year’s Olympic Games are so exciting, with plenty of elite-level talent looking to break national and world records and make their mark on track and field.
The war on super spikes?
Nike, in a similar vein to its Vaporfly marathon shoe, arguably got the head start on things in terms of super spikes. Weighing in at just 125g, the Nike Dragonfly features a Pebax plate encased within Nike’s lauded ZoomX (PBEA) foam. It’s predominantly designed for longer distance track events (5k/10k).
The Nike Victory is also the brand’s middle-distance spike. It features Nike’s high-energy return ZoomX foam, alongside an AirZoom Unit and aggressive carbon fibre plate. Team GB’s Keeley Hodgkinson told RW she wears the Victory on race day.
But other companies like Adidas, New Balance, Brooks, Asics and, of course, Puma, have been following suit, making this year's Olympic Games the most level-playing (track and) field yet.
But innovations aren't without their limits. Van der Veen says that World Athletics 'really want to control [standards]', with new stack height limitations coming into effect this November, and the potential for caps on energy return, too.
'Right now, what all the brands are doing and what we [at Puma] are doing is really investing in how much more responsive we can get foams,' she says. 'And that's innovation and you cannot stop innovation. But at the same time, I know that World Athletics is trying to find a way to not let things get out of hand.'
Healey also says the next steps are for brands to customise both spikes and road racing shoes for archetypes of runners; for example, those who have certain biomechanics, rather than just the distance they run.
'I think you're going to see more and more brands really dialling in to the exact specs that work best,' she says. 'And also with the tracks, I think sometimes people forget that, like, the tracks are getting faster and faster as well. So how do the shoes interact with the track?'
With the first Paris Olympics track events kicking off on 1 August, though, one thing's for sure: Puma, like all other brands, seem pretty sure of their product. And as Van der Veen puts it, 'now it's up to the athletes'.
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