(Paris) The regulations governing the characteristics of footwear in athletics will become a little more restrictive after the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 for spikes, World athletics announced on Thursday.
The Council of the International Federation amended its regulations for 2022 (the provisional rules expire on December 31, 2021) and decided in particular that the thickness of the sole of the pointe shoes (shoes for the track) would be authorized up to a maximum of 20 mm. for all disciplines from November 2024, after the next Olympic Games in Paris, leaving time for equipment manufacturers to prepare for it.
Today the soles can reach 25 mm for the triple jump and for races of 800 m and more.
International athletics have been shaken up by the arrival of a new generation of shoes with thicker soles, mostly with revolutionary carbon plates and foams, since 2016 for road racing and 2019 for the track.
These new technologies, little supervised, have allowed a general improvement in performance and raised questions of equity between athletes and the credibility of the many world records established.
“The main objective of the Athletics Footwear Working Group has been to find a long-term solution to the balance between fairness and innovation,” writes World athletics in its press release.
Among the novelties of the regulations, it will now be forbidden for athletes to get rid of their shoes just after their competition, by giving them to their team for example, in order to be able to satisfy a possible control.