評論
打印
Science & technology
科技板塊
Sports equipment
體育用品
Getting a leg up
搶占上風
New running shoes could help smash a string of Olympic records
新型跑鞋有望打破一系列奧運紀錄
Platform shoes are back in fashion, at least in athletics. Many of the long-distance runners at the Tokyo Olympics, which begin on July 23rd, will arrive at the starting line sporting footwear with a distinctive chunky-looking heel. It will be more than just a fashion statement. The new shoes offer such a big performance advantage that critics have described them as "technological doping".
厚底鞋又開始流行了，至少在田徑場上是這樣。在7月23日開幕的東京奧運會上，許多長跑運動員都將穿著一雙特別炸眼的厚底運動鞋抵達起跑線。這種新款鞋將不僅僅是一種時尚宣言，它在性能上也有很大的優勢，以至于批評者將其描述為“技術興奮劑”。
Running-shoe makers have long tried to boost athletic performance, observes Geoff Burns, a biomechanics expert at the University of Michigan. In olden days, a 1% improvement in "running economy"—the energy taken to travel a given distance—would have impressed. But in 2016 Nike released the first version of its "Vaporfly" model, which improved running economy by 4%.
密歇根大學的生物力學專家杰夫·伯恩斯表示，跑鞋制造商一直在努力提高運動員的表現。在過去，如果“跑步經濟性”(跑一定距離所消耗的能量)提高1%就會讓人印象深刻。而在2016年，耐克發布了第一個版本的“Vaporfly”模型，使跑步經濟性提高了4%。
If that percentage were to translate directly into performance, it would knock about five minutes off an elite male's marathon time. In practice, as Dr Burns observes, it wouldn't quite do that. A marathon improvement of around 90 seconds would be a more realistic expectation. But Vaporfly and its successors have helped athletes smash a string of records. On June 6th Sifan Hassan, a Dutch runner, completed a women's 10,000 metres race in 29 minutes and 6.82 seconds, beating a record set in 2016. Two days later she was overtaken by Letesenbet Gidey, an Ethiopian, who clocked 29 minutes and 1.03 seconds. In 2019 Eliod Kipchoge, a Kenyan, became the first to run, albeit in an unofficial event, a marathon's distance of 42.195km in undertwo hours. The same weekend Brigid Kosgei, another Kenyan, broke a women's marathon record that had stood for 16 years.
如果將該百分比直接轉化為成績，那么一位優秀男運動員的馬拉松時間將減少5分鐘左右。然而，正如伯恩斯博士所觀察到的，在實踐中它并不能完全實現這一點。在馬拉松比賽中提高90秒左右是比較現實的期望。而Vaporfly及其系列鞋已經幫助運動員打破了一系列記錄。6月6日，荷蘭選手斯凡·哈桑以29分6.82秒的成績完成了女子10000米的比賽，打破了2016年創下的紀錄。兩天后，埃塞俄比亞選手Letesenbet Gidey以29分1.03秒的成績超越了她。2019年，肯尼亞人埃利奧德·基普喬格在兩小時內跑完42.195公里的馬拉松，成為第一個跑完全程的人，盡管這是一項非官方賽事。就在同一個周末，另一名肯尼亞人布里吉德·科斯蓋打破了保持了16年的女子馬拉松紀錄。
Scientists are still puzzling over exactly how the shoes work. The soles are made of a new type of foam that offers an unprecedented mix of resilience and squidginess, according to Dr Burns. This returns around 80% of the energy from each strike of a runner's foot. The carbon-fibre plate may help by stiffening the midsole, and possibly by altering a runner's gait. By cushioning a runner's bones, muscles and ligaments from repetitive impacts, the shoes may even help athletes train harder than they otherwise could.
科學家們對于該鞋的工作原理仍感到困惑。據伯恩斯博士表示，該款鞋鞋底由一種新型泡沫材料制成，這種材料具有前所未有的彈性和柔軟性，能夠將跑步者每一次腳部撞擊所產生的能量的80%返還給跑步者。碳纖維板可以幫助加強鞋底的硬度，似乎還可以改變跑步者的步態。這種鞋甚至可以通過緩沖跑步者的骨骼、肌肉和韌帶免受不斷的沖擊來幫助運動員進行比平時更艱苦的訓練。
All that is great news for Nike, which sells the Vaporfly and its successors for around $250 each. (Rival manufacturers now offer similar shoes of their own.) Whether it is good for the sport is another question. Different sports have different tolerances for technological assistance. Running tends towards the conservative end of the spectrum.
這一切對耐克來說都是好消息，他們以每雙250美元左右的價格銷售Vaporfly及其系列鞋。(競爭對手現在也在提供類似鞋。)然而對這項運動是否有益則是另一個問題。不同的運動對技術援助有不同的容忍度，而跑步傾向于保守的一端。
In January 2020 World Athletics, the governing body of international athletics, passed new rules limiting the thickness of a road shoe's sole to 40mm. Meanwhile, Nike appears to have shelved plans to deploy high tech shoes designed for sprinters at the Tokyo games, possibly because they did not comply with regulations either. But if they, or a rival manufacturer, have worked out a way around that problem, there could be fireworks in the sprints, too.
2020年1月，國際田徑管理機構世界田聯通過了新規定，將路用鞋的鞋底厚度限制在40毫米。與此同時，耐克似乎已經擱置了在東京奧運會上為短跑運動員設計的高科技運動鞋的計劃，可能是因為它們不符合規定。但如果他們或競爭對手已經找到了解決這個問題的方法，那么在短跑比賽中也可能會擦出火花。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
