Run Shoe Rule Drama Resurfaces at T100 French Riviera
If there’s one thing that has been consistent about the 2025 professional triathlon racing season, it’s that the rulebook has held a starring role. We’ve written about various rules, violations, and their implications nearly a dozen times this year, and now we’re about to add another log onto the fire. The lesson, as always: there ain’t no drama quite like triathlon drama.
Both Hayden Wilde and Sam Long appear to have worn the soon-to-be-released ASICS MetaSpeed Ray at the T100 French Riviera race this past weekend. According to ASICS, the MetaSpeed Ray is the lightest super shoe on the market, coming in at 129 grams / 4.55 ounces for the pair in a men’s size 10. It has the latest version of ASICS proprietary foam for cushioning, and of course, a carbon-plate for energy return. Initial reviews are praising the shoe for the cushioning to weight ratio, and the weight savings over a traditional super shoe. It also comes in under the 40mm stack height rule — more on that in a minute.
There’s just one problem: the shoe hasn’t been approved for World Athletics competitions yet. That, theoretically, means it wasn’t legal for World Triathlon events, either.
World Athletics rules for road running allow for the use of prototype footwear during the course of development, prior to a shoe coming out for retail usage. However, production models of footwear are generally held off of the approved list until the shoe is available for public purchase. The MetaSpeed Ray release date for shipping is September 10th, making it eligible for competition the following day, September 11th.
It appears Wilde even knew specifically about this rule, as shown in a post-race conversation captured by ProTriNews.
World Triathlon does perform random shoe control before, during, and after a given event. For footwear that can’t be identified, the shoe can be sent to World Tri headquarters for review. If the shoe is in question, in results will appear a note of “Uncertified/UNC” below the result. If the shoe is determined to be legal after the fact, the note is removed. Otherwise, the athlete will be disqualified.
No such notice appears next to or below Wilde or Long; it would appear that neither athlete had been subjected to shoe control at the race. And because the time limit for protests under World Triathlon rules has passed, the results should stand at this point.
What makes this messy, of course, is that the shoe will be entirely legal in a few days. It is also why IRONMAN has, by our estimation, got this more right as compared to World Triathlon on the rules front. According to the IRONMAN rulebook, there’s more ambiguity in this situation; if a shoe is under the 40mm stack height rule, and does not have more than one carbon structure, it’s likely to be OK. If a shoe can’t be identified, they’ve otherwise copied the World Triathlon rulebook language.
In this case, the MetaSpeed Ray is pretty easy to identify and find information on. It’s not the case of, say, Gustav Iden’s prototype On footwear, which exceeded stack height regulations. Nor is it like the HOKA Skyward X, the subject of much consternation earlier this year; that shoe is a production model that blatantly violates the 40 millimeter stack height rule.
There’s also specific language as to both race official and athlete responsibility in both rulebooks: both World Triathlon and IRONMAN explicitly state that athletes are subject to shoe control before, during, and after the event. (That said, it’s also somewhat obvious that race officials are not as eagle-eyed about running shoes as Internet sleuths.) But, at least in the IRONMAN rulebook, there’s a provision for athletes to protest the eligibility of another athlete on the basis of the equipment used (Rule 3.06(d), for the pedantic among us). So if you’re racing and you spot someone with a shoe on the prohibited list, you can alert an official to it.
One thing that seems to be certain: ASICS athletes are bound to be wearing the MetaSpeed Ray come the IRONMAN World Championship races this year. It will also be interesting to see how many non-sponsored athletes convert over to the shoe, and if it leads to a dramatic increase in the market share for ASICS at the professional level. At last year’s respective IM World Championships, only Nike and the AlphaFly / Vaporfly combination outmatched the ASICS MetaSpeed line-up in market share.
Is it time to bump this thread consider wing Hayden Wilde recent result in some banned shoes?
https://www.instagram.com/p/DOJNpccDU0p/?igsh=ODMxcnZjdmp4a2oy
Seems about right for this sport. Enforce some rules sometimes and ignore other rules most times. Hayden would have won in some Vibram Five Fingers so at least the shoes didn’t mess with any results.
Doping - potential damage to body.
DIY bike stuff - damage to other participants when it falls off
Shoving bottle in jersey - possibly losing control and crashing
Shoes??? Come on. Complete BS.
Why not have shoes with springs in them?
Why stop at 5mm thick wetsuits?
At some point, rules need to have some degree of meaning. Or don’t have them at all. But then understand that you’re probably making a fundamental change to what the sport means (and the ability to compare efforts across eras).
I’ll cross post this here
Interesting. It’s pretty dumb to say that shoe is illegal this week but legal next week.
If it was an outright violation of the rules shoe, fair enough. But the whole notion of this shoe is legal, but you need to wait until it’s publicly launched is dumb.
Almost no one will still be able to get it on launch date, and even if they do, the sponsored competitor still has an eight week head start in training with it. There’s no level playing field here and we also know that other shoes are likely as fast or faster.
Nothing burger. I’m not in favor of giving technocrats who want to amass more power to their organization a say over what athletes can use and win in general anyway (within reason obviously).
Getting down to millimetres of stack height gets very stupid, but ok, go there. But then you give the mouse that cookie and they want to assign blackout dates? Kick rocks, no milk for you.
At the end of the day, this is a marketing ploy by Asics to get attention to their new shoe that would otherwise be lost in the noise. So keep fanning their flames.
I understand, conceptually, why they want production shoes to wait until launch date (it’s tied to whether elite ams / non-big contract pros can get a hold of the latest and greatest. Basically, because Nike).
Pre-orders are open on a ton of sites. And it looks like sizable initial at-once inventory. I would not at all be shocked to see a lot of these on AGers feet in Nice and Kona.
Well that one is silly too. It makes the sport safer for 80% of triathletes that can’t swim well. It would probably grow the sport.
Yes but the elite contracted pros have training experience on that shoe.
Not many people pros want to jump into a never used style of shoe before on race day. So it’s still not “fair”. The only fairness option would be to further push back the date and say six months on the market. *
And for what? This idea of gear parity fairness that doesn’t exist anyway when one guy gets a box of shoes a week and the other has to wait in line and spend a weeks rent to get a single pair.
We all know this shoe will be like the others on the market. Maybe some respond better to it, some don’t.
I agree we’ll see people using them, but at some point stocks will sell out and we still have the same disparity. So the time delay is kind of moot. We can’t just regulate scarcity away.
*And the company can play games and hold back stocks just enough to fiddle with those demand curves. Or a president can sign dumb things with his pen and muck up supply chains…
From what I’ve read and heard though, these shoes are really not that effective unless you’re running faster than most AGers, even KQers. This is not a shoe for the masses, and can even be counterproductive at lower speeds. I’ve heard the same of the Puma Fast-R3s too. Not that it will stop AGers from buying them.
So I’m confused. Were the shoes technically legal during the T100 race? Or was this a miss by the refs?
I think you would be shocked at the number of people at the front of the field who wear a shoe for the first time on race day.
Especially in that OTQ crowd.
Regardless – the production date thing isn’t going to go away for World Athletics comps. I don’t think it’s particularly relevant for triathlon, especially given how few shoe contracts actually exist.
They were technically not eligible for competition.
Ya what I’m referring to is jumping into something crazy different. Not just using a new pair.
Some Nike athletes wouldn’t even use the AF3 for many months after release. And the new Puma shoes? I think you’d be crazy to just grab that and go run a race in it without some good tests first. And who wants to waste valuable training time playing what-if with a new to them shoe? Or rather, what serious pro would do that?
Nah, I’m talking “I have never worn this shoe before and I’m going to take the leap on it now because it is shown to be faster than what I’m wearing” thing. That happens a lot more than you might think.
I’ve sold a fair number of race shoes to people the morning of the Boston Marathon as they’re about to board the bus out to Hopkinton.
So Long wore them in London (did he wear them in France?) and Wilde wore them in France. Hayden admitted at the finish line he knew they were illegal.
Why aren’t they DQ’d if they are racing under World Triathlon rules. They would be DQ’d in a WTCS race.