The Nike Vaporfly first came out in 2017 and their popularity, along with its performance, prompted a new series of running shoes. The dark grey line shows the carbon fiber plate. Nike Vaporfly cut in half to show the different layers that make up the base of the shoe.

Brooks Sports, a competitor of Nike in running shoes, said in a public statement that they would generally 'spend more time between prototype and bringing a shoe to market but the recent World Athletics ruling pushed us to reassess our go to market strategy' and other companies are in the same situation. Competitors of Nike rushed to bring new running shoes to market in time to meet the new guidelines so their sponsored athletes had a chance to compete in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and for these companies to show off their products in one of the most watched sporting events in the world. These new guidelines suited Nike's Vaporfly shoes which were already publicly available, however other companies were left to catch up. The components of the shoes are not the only thing that had major changes starting April 30, 2020, 'any shoe must have been available for purchase by any athlete on the open retail market (online or in store) for a period of four months before it can be used in competition'. The plate may be in more than one part but those parts must be located sequentially in one plane (not stacked or in parallel) and must not overlap'. The major changes of these guidelines state that the 'sole must be no thicker than 40mm' and that 'the shoe must not contain more than one rigid embedded plate or blade (of any material) that runs either the full length or only part of the length of the shoe.

These complaints have been happening since 2017-2018 but World Athletics did not give a more clear answer until January 2020. These updates came to answer the complaints many people have had concerning the technology in the Nike Vaporfly running shoes. On January 31, 2020, World Athletics, the governing body for professional track and field, issued new guidelines concerning shoes to be used in the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

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