Why The Olympics Almost Banned This Shoe

When is sports gear so good it’s actually cheating?

There is a ton of cool sports gear that’s banned from sports for making athletes too good. Swimsuits that make a swimmer too streamlined, gloves that make a receiver’s hands too grippy, bats that let a player hit the ball too hard, and shoes that help a runner go too freaking fast…

They call it “TECH DOPING,” using physical gear to gain an unfair advantage. In this video, I’ll show you the banned gear you won’t see at the Paris Olympics, and the cutting edge tech you will see that’s on the very limit of what’s allowed.

You might be thinking, hold on, no gear should give athletes an advantage! But… we don’t run barefoot anymore. We don’t swim naked. We use tech to play sports. And that tech is always improving, pushing forward what humans can do.

So… where’s the line?

This is about way more than sports. In every part of our lives, technology pushes forward what we can do! And it’s up to us to decide what we want from it. This video is about that question.
We talked to athletes, looked at the world’s best gear, and even went all the way to Nike’s test lab to try on the real Team USA Olympic uniforms. This is the cutting edge of sports tech, explained.

Chapters:
0:00 What is “technology doping”?
1:48 What gear should be banned?
3:10 The world’s fastest swimsuit
4:23 Should this be allowed?
5:24 The world’s fastest shoes
6:28 I cut open a supershoe
8:32 What makes supershoes so fast?
9:28 I try the Team USA Olympic uniform
11:36 Should these shoes be allowed?
12:42 Should prosthetics be allowed?
14:01 Why Blake Leeper was banned from the Olympics
15:46 What is fair?
16:38 ;)

Bio:
Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, Huge If True, Cleo explores complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build. Before going independent, Cleo was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. She produced videos for Vox’s YouTube channel, was the host and senior producer of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, and was co-host and producer of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked.

Additional reading and watching:

Gear I use:
Camera: Sony A7SIII
Lens: Sony 16–35 mm F2.8 GM
Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX and Zoom H4N Pro

Music: Musicbed, Tom Fox

—
Welcome to the joke down low:

Which sport is always in trouble?
Badminton.

Find a way to use “trouble” in a comment to let me know you’re a real one who made it to the end of the description :)

[Rugops]

I bought a pair of shoes from a drug dealer once, I don't know what he laced them with but I was tripping for days.

[randxalthor]

Blake stood out here, seems like an amazing human being. Being capable of saying "I disagree, but I understand" in the face of being disqualified from the Olympics for something outside of your control is a whole other level of resilience and maturity.

[anatutech]

BIG RESPECT to my man Blake. "I disagree but I understand". Real sportsmanship there. Wishing him all the best!

[DaveBerendhuysen]

There's only one true solution: go back to naked Olympics. Leave the tech and doping to the Enhanced Games

[samchen]

15:45 "I don't agree with it but I understand." It's SO refreshing to hear people open minded enough to truly hear out the opposing side, even if they don't agree with it. Kudos.

[vnldces]

This is really the question of "is the sport purely a test of human skill, or a technology race as well?". For me, the innovation that comes from it all, and trickes down to the everyday use, is worth the temporary " unfairness" created by someone having a slightly better gear than others. This can also be mitigated by the "all gear must be available to all" rule, which is a brilliant idea.

[YOEL_]

There's a place where Nike truly finds the limits of human body, and that's their supply-chain factories...

[ryanvw]

Nike probably wouldn’t want you to, but it would have at least been fair to mention that the record of Kipchoge is not recognised as an official record as it broke a lot of the rules that you’ve mentioned in this video. Of course it’s still an amazing achievement, but there’s a reason it has not been matched in an official event. This video makes it seem like it was purely the shoes, but he literally had a group of pacers shield him from the wind while running.

[FunOnI]

Hey, I KNOW THE ANSWER: JUST GIVE EVERY ATHLETES The SAME kind of equipment for that particular game while minding their sizes.

[michaelhannah]

I have been running for 25 years and when I first ran in the Alphafly 3 I was BLOWN AWAY, the biggest impact for a normal runner like myself was the reduction in fatigue. I can’t imagine how much it must help a top level runner

[danzwku]

Ah, so the stuff Batman uses with his billions in research and development.

[TheCatWitch]

15:41 It’s so unfair that his estimated height was calculated using averages from other ethnicities, that are traditionally smaller. It feels almost like that they were looking for any technicality that would impede him from participating in the Olympics.

[andriinaum]

10:00 35° Celsius for those who might ask

[TJ-vhps]

0:55 “we don’t runs barefoot anymore, we don’t swim naked.” You’ve hit on a brilliant idea! The ancient Olympic Games were competed in the nude. To make the games as fair as possible, all competitors must be nude. We make the games more fair and increase viewership immensely. 😂

[TheRashid]

0:42 “Whoa that’s grippy” while blurring is WILD. Editor, I see what you’re doing

[RedHatMedia]

By the way, you should never cut carbon fibre without a proper face mask and a an air exhaust system right next to the saw. Carbon fibre dust is a bit like a modern asbestos and will stay in your lungs forever, since your body can't break it down. It will also stay airborne for a pretty long time, due to to its super fine size.

[zumabbar]

11:05 great comedic timing delivery for the "she's been running for... 2 and a half minutes." lmao

[altrogeruvah]

I don't think organizations are banning techwear because it's exceeding human ability, it's because of the likely precedence of backdoor exclusivity deals by selling ever-evolving tech to the usual highest bidders _first_ (namely the USA, Gulf States, China etc), especially before a very specific quadrennial international sport event. We wouldn't even be having this discussion about banning tech if every single athlete from every corner of the world had indiscriminate access to the same wearables in every international event.

[Roy_Godiksen]

One of the most important points to consider is: Can every potential Olympic athlete afford the same equipment? If Ethiopian athletes all of a sudden struggleto keep up because the west is wearing high tech, ultra expensive equipment. How would that be in line with the Olympicspirit?

[chennyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy]

Allowing the swimsuits also meant that amateur competitors, national competitors, school competitors had to consider these extraordinarily expensive garments. Everyone can buy a goggle. Not everyone can buy $1000 LZR swimsuit.