[48snickers]

This is article is pretty light on details. There may be many reasons for the recent spat of records (most of the ones mentioned, btw, are regional), but the shoes are definitely a big contributor.

It's worth noting that 9(!) world records in track and field were set in 2020 (https://trackandfieldnews.com/records/mens-world-records/). Two of those were not on the track (pole vault, shot), and thee were set by a single individual (Cheptegei). I'm too lazy to try to dig up and chart the historical record progressions, but that does seem like a fair blip.

Myself, and virtually every competitive runner that I know at the amateur level, has invested in so called "super shoes" from one of the various manufacturers, with impressive (relative) results- generally, everyone has PR'd since the switch. Aside from that small sample set, numerous other studies have shown that the shoes deliver: - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/13/upshot/nike-v... - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-018-1024-z

At the end of the day, none of these shoes is actually giving you any energy for free- they're just much less lossy than the previous generation of shoes. This feels like the right direction of progress to me.