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These are the shoes Kenenisa Bekele will wear for the elite-only London Marathon

Photo credit: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS - Getty Images
Photo credit: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS - Getty Images

From Runner's World

  • Kenenisa Bekele will take on Eliud Kipchoge at this weekend's elite-only London Marathon.

  • Unlike Kipchoge, Bekele revealed he will not be running in the Nike Alphafly Next%, opting for an older version of the shoe.

It's billed to be the race of the century, as Ethiopia's Kenensia Bekele and Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge go head to head at the elite-only London Marathon on 4 October. Bekele ran 2:01:41 at the Berlin marathon last September, narrowly missing out on Kipchoge’s marathon world record by just two seconds. A few weeks later, Kipchoge became the first man to ever finish a sub-2 hour marathon.

Yet as both men toe the line on Sunday, a lot of attention will be given to the shoes they are racing in. Kipchoge is wearing a Kenya edition of the Nike Alphafly Next%, a shoe that has been surrounded by a great deal of controversy. Kipchoge wore a prototype of the Alphafly for his INEOS 1:59 race in Vienna last year.

At the London Marathon elite men press conference, Bekele revealed he had decided not to race in the Alphafly, but was instead opting for the Vaporfly Next% - the same shoe he wore when he almost broke the world record in Berlin last October.

Photo credit: Anadolu Agency - Getty Images
Photo credit: Anadolu Agency - Getty Images

'I will run in the Vaporfly [Next%] not the Alphafly, because with Alphafly I have some problems and need some more time to adapt. At the moment I am using the older shoe' Bekele said.

When asked about the controversy surrounding the Alphaflys and whether he thought they were in keeping with 'the spirit of the sport', Kipchoge replied, 'We live in the 21st century. Firstly, we need to accept change. Secondly, development goes hand in hand with technology. We are now doing a press conference virtually - is that not technology? We need to accept technology in our hearts, move on, we want development in this world.'

What are the mani differences between the Vaporfly Next% and the Alphafly Next%?

  • Both shoes have a full length carbon fibre plate to prevent energy loss as the foot hits the ground.

  • Both shoes use the same Nike ZoomX foam.

  • The Alphafly Next% has the addition of two 'Zoom Air' units, designed to return more energy than the ZoomX foam. Tony Bignell, VP of Footwear Innovation at Nike about the shoe, he said of the air pods: ‘If you look at general foams, they return 60-70% of your energy back, the Zoom X foam returns about 80% of the energy back and Zoom Air returns about 90%, so we’ve just taken out something that gives you 80% and replaced it with something that gives you 90-ish%. So you’re just making the system more efficient, more effective.

  • The Alphafly Next% upper is made from AtomKnit - a lighter flyknit fabric. The Vaporfly Next% uses a woven mesh upper.

  • The stack height of the Alphafly Next% is higher, hitting 39mm, the Vaporfly Next% is 36mm.

Whether the shoes make a difference to either runner as they take on the 19.7 laps of St James's Park remains to be seen.

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