Paris (AFP)

The stratospheric performances of Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei and Ethiopian Letesenbet Gidey, who broke the 10,000m and 5,000m world records on Wednesday in Valencia, were achieved under very particular conditions which testify to recent developments. athletics.

Several factors (shoes, light hare) seem to have favored the times of the two athletes.

The suspicion of doping, in a sport permanently affected by cheating, is inevitable, but neither athlete has ever been involved in the slightest affair.

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The "magic" of shoes?

After revolutionizing road running, the American supplier Nike has launched two pairs of spikes (track shoes) suspected of significantly improving performance and marketed this year after some athletes benefited from prototypes in 2019.

The "Air Zoom Victory" (a carbon plate, front cushions, 800 / 1,500 m) and the "ZoomX Dragonfly" (no plate, a special foam, up to 10,000 m), carried by Cheptegei and Gidey, have reinforced soles where the tips were previously intended to be as thin and light as possible.

"These shoes are upsetting the stride, but it is still too early to estimate a reliable time saving, there is no solid scientific study yet", notes Vincent Guyot, master student "expertise in high level sport" to Insep, which collects a maximum of data related to these peaks.

Statistically, however, he has noticed a significant change in performance over the past year and a half with shoes.

"In France, for example this season, the results collapsed for most athletic disciplines, because of the poorer training conditions due to confinement. In the middle distance, on the other hand, the results on the other hand resisted , which sounds incredible. "

According to Vincent Guyot, 62% of the athletes wore a model of "magic shoes" in the Diamond League in Monaco in August, including Joshua Cheptegei who had broken the world record in the 5,000m there.

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The hare of the future?

Helped by three "hare" athletes in a classic way, Cheptegei and Gidey also benefited from a fourth pace leader on Wednesday, with a lighting system placed at the edge of the track.

This innovation appeared in 2018 in the Netherlands before being tested at a few events in 2019 and then introduced more widely this season, in particular at the meetings in Oslo and Monaco.

This inexhaustible hare of watchmaking precision allows athletes to maintain a constant rhythm at a very high pace, a precious aid in the hunt for records.

According to an analysis by trainer and statistician Pierre-Jean Vazel, Letesenbet Gidey ran his laps on Wednesday (12.5 over 5,000 m) with extreme regularity, with only two seconds difference between his fastest laps. fast (66.7 sec) and her slowest laps (68.9 sec), while the record holder so far, her compatriot Tirunesh Dibaba, had completed laps between 64.2 sec and 71.6 sec, a seven second gap!

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A tailor-made race?

On the blue track at the Turia stadium in Valencia, Gidey and Cheptegei only had to worry about the stopwatch (three hares each, reduced competition).

The competition was indeed tailor-made for them, at the end of a season truncated by the new coronavirus pandemic where meetings were rare.

The organization by their management company Global Sports Communication, recalls to a lesser extent the marathon run in less than two hours by the Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge in October 2019 in Vienna, even if he knew that he could not approve his record (too hares, supplies different from official rules etc.).

However, setting up a record-breaking race remains an old habit in athletics, whether in the time of Australian Ron Clarke (10,000 m in 1965), Briton Roger Bannister (mile in 1954) or even Frenchman Jules Ladoumègue in the 1930s.

© 2020 AFP