Take Adidas, for example: With just two years until the opening ceremonies in China, the German giant was struggling to conjure a new track spike for its star Texan runner, the 400-meter gold medalist Jeremy Wariner. After watching hours of super-slow-motion footage of Wariner's quirky gait, the company decided to replace his Pookie spike, which helped Wariner win in Athens (and nearly every 400-meter race he has entered since). Called Lone Star and sporting a crown insignia to signify Wariner's leadership in the sport, the new shoe has the following unorthodox feature: It lists to port.
"Most middle-distance races are won in the turns," explains Mic Lussier, the French-Canadian leader of the Adidas Innovation Team, or aIT, which developed the shoe. And track runners never, ever turn to the right. So Lussier's 50 biomechanical engineers, industrial designers and electromechanical experts set about making asymmetrical spikes for Wariner. The skewed shoes would be founded on ultralight carbon plates made of microscopic nanotubes 20 times stronger than steel. And they would "redirect the line of force that loads on the outside of his right foot," Lussier says, "and send it inward, toward his big toe." In other words, Wariner's new right shoe would accelerate to the left.
"The idea is based on the same asymmetrical suspension you see in a Nascar stock car," Lussier says. "It's really quite amazing."
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