AFP

Derided by purists, evangelised by innovators: “super shoes” are the tools of the trade for today’s athletes and will continue to radically change the landscape of track and road running, experts have told AFP.

A mass of not only new world records, but also a slew of national records and startling personal bests since the 2016 Rio Olympics show athletes are thriving on new technology that has pushed the biomechanics of the running shoe to a new level.

When the Olympic athletics programme starts in Tokyo on Friday, many athletes will be wearing the super-light shoes that contain a rigid plate and unique foam that lend a propulsive sensation to every stride.

Critics claim the shoes, first developed by Nike, are the equivalent of mechanical doping, while supporters hail them as a revolutionary advance after decades of stagnation.

“There seems to be an acceptance now that the new generation of shoes are part of the sport moving forward,” Geoff Burns, a biomechanics and sport performance researcher at the University of Michigan and an expert in running shoe technology, told AFP.

“We definitely don’t hear of people calling for the shoes to be banned so much anymore.”

US-based journalist Brian Metzler, author of “Kicksology: The Hype, Science, Culture and Cool of Running Shoes”, said there was a broader acceptance, largely because “all brands have caught up to Nike and because there is a greater understanding of how the school technology works”.

“The key factors in acceptance are making sure there is a fair playing field and also the notion that there is no additional energy being created by the shoes, but instead a greater return of energy from the force the runner is applying with each stride,” Metzler told AFP.

Athletes, added Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston marathon and a former editor-in-chief of Runner’s World magazine, “only care about running fast, and they have realised they must wear new shoes — from whatever company — if they are to keep up with the competition”.

He said: “I doubt the general public cares very much about the shoes, or understands them. That leaves only the sports historians and sports statisticians to debate what they should do about the fast new performances.”

– ‘A real time difference’ –

The technology, which exists in ‘flat’ running shoes and in spikes, is approved by track and field’s governing body, World Athletics, albeit with parameters set on foam thickness, among other things.

The designs “have proven that they allow a runner to be more efficient and that’s a big change, especially from 800m to 10,000m,” said Metzler.

“Some athletes have told me that the new spikes can provide a five to 15-second boost in the 5,000m, so that’s a real time difference.”

Burns said time was needed to understand the rarity of a performance, saying the sport was “still adapting to the faster times”.

Letesenbet Gidey of Ethiopia was wearing the shoes when she broke the women’s 10,000m world record in June. Her time of 29min 1.03sec sliced over a minute off her previous best.

And Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei used the shoes to set the men’s 5,000m world record of 12:35.36 last year.

“The way the fast performances in the distance and mid-distance races are celebrated by fans, announcers and the media is still likely overdone for their respective importance,” said Burns.

“That is, the sport still hasn’t completely re-calibrated what’s good and what’s great. That will take a bit more time and more racing. 

“I suspect by the end of next year, we’ll be close, and by two years from now, we’ll have a good feeling of what’s truly an exceptional performance in the new era.”

The more advanced technology is, Burns continued, the more it invites “complexity in the sport, for the athletes, fans and governing bodies.”

Metzler added: “With running events, the die has been cast and we’re already at a place where the new shoes have elevated human performance.

“Mostly that’s a good thing, I think, but we must realise that a sub-13 minute 5,000m (for men) today is not the same as it was in the era of David Moorcroft, Said Aouita or Bob Kennedy” in past decades.

Burns feels however there will “probably not” be world records in Tokyo.

“The spikes and shoes right now are predominantly beneficial in the distance races, and distance records are rarely set in championships, as they’re often tactical.”

Burfoot agreed: “The Olympics are about winning and losing.

“World records are more likely to happen in one-day events under optimal conditions.”

All three experts agreed many top athletes had not seen their form dip during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying many had benefitted from the extra rest and training.

“Athletes are healthy, ready, eager, and wearing super shoes!” said Burfoot.

After battling increasingly large and deadly wildfires non-stop for weeks, and with no respite in sight, firefighters in California are admitting they are burnt out.

“After a point, you start getting a little screwy, your mental health doesn’t do well,” said 55-year-old fire captain David Tikkanen.

“We’ve been up 14 days with no end in sight,” he said as he fought back the flames in Twain, a small community nestled in the California pines, which his team was hosing with water to stop it being consumed by the huge Dixie Fire.

They are in a race to prevent any sparks from spreading in an area so desiccated by drought that the vegetation is a veritable tinderbox.

It is grueling work, carried out in the middle of a conflagration covering some 200,000 acres (80,000 hectares).

– Fire season all year round –

A veteran of 35 years on the job, Tikkanen has found himself facing increasingly massive blazes, a phenomenon he attributes to climate change. 

“It’s becoming a year-round fire season in California, it’s just a matter of time before we have fires going 24/7, all year long,” he told AFP.

“It makes it more stressful and it’s more dangerous,” he said, leaning on a rake, his red firefighter helmet perched on his head.

No fewer than 5,400 men and women are battling the Dixie Fire, the biggest conflagration to ravage the state this year. 

On the steep roads of northern California, a succession of billboards pay homage to all the “fire heroes.”

But with each passing year, their missions get longer and more dangerous, and that takes a mental toll. 

“It takes what it takes, everybody has their breaking point, you know,” Tikkanen said. “Some people use alcohol, I don’t. I go mountain biking or find some other fun things to do.”

“Sometimes you need the external help,” he said, without judgment. “I’ve used it in the past, it saved me.”

– ‘Don’t bring it home’ –

At the bottom of the hill leading up to Twain, Patrick Dellenback, 36, recuperates after trying to quell several heat sources. 

His unit came straight from the Bootleg Fire, a gigantic blaze in neighboring Oregon, and is on its 12th day on the job. He admits the work can be exhausting, both physically and mentally.

“We’ve got peer support at work, so if something is really bad we can go to people who are specialized in mental health,” he said.

“I try not to bring it home to my wife,” said the firefighter, his face blackened with soot.

Behind him, Tikkanen climbed behind the wheel of his car: one of the firefighters from his unit has been taken to the hospital. Nothing serious, but he has to rush to his bedside to check up on him, before driving back up these winding and smoky roads and starting work again. 

“It’s part of the job,” he sighed as he drove off.

The global economy’s business-as-usual approach to climate change has seen Earth’s “vital signs” deteriorate to record levels, an influential group of scientists said Wednesday, warning that several climate tipping points were now imminent.

The researchers, part of a group of more than 14,000 scientists who have signed on to an initiative declaring a worldwide climate emergency, said that governments had consistently failed to address the root cause of climate change: “the overexploitation of the Earth”. 

Since a similar assessment in 2019, they noted an “unprecedented surge” in climate-related disasters, including flooding in South America and Southeast Asia, record-shattering heatwaves and wildfires in Australia and the US, and devastating cyclones in Africa and South Asia. 

Of 31 “vital signs” — key metrics of planetary health that include greenhouse gas emissions, glacier thickness, sea-ice extent and deforestation — they found that 18 hit record highs or lows. 

For example, despite a dip in pollution linked to the pandemic, levels of atmospheric CO2 and methane hit all-time highs in 2021.

Greenland and Antarctica both recently showed all-time low levels of ice mass, and glaciers are melting 31 percent faster than they did just 15 years ago, the authors said. 

Both ocean heat and global sea levels set new records since 2019, and the annual loss rate of the Brazilian Amazon reached a 12-year high in 2020. 

Echoing previous research, they said that forest degradation linked to fire, drought and logging was causing parts of the Brazilian Amazon to now act as a source of carbon, rather than absorb the gas from the atmosphere. 

Livestock such as cows and sheep are now at record levels, numbering more than four billion and with a mass exceeding that of all humans and wild land mammals combined, they said.

Tim Lenton, director of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and study co-author, said the recent record-breaking heatwave in the Western United States and Canada showed that the climate had already begun to “behave in shocking, unexpected ways”.

“We need to respond to the evidence that we are hitting climate tipping points with equally urgent action to decarbonise the global economy and start restoring instead of destroying nature,” he said. 

– ‘Address the root cause’ –

The researchers said there was “mounting evidence that we are nearing or have already crossed” a number of climate tipping points. 

These include melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, which may now be irreversible on a centuries-long time scale, regardless of how or if humankind slashes its emissions. 

They said increasing ocean deoxygenation and warming waters were threatening warm-water coral reefs, upon which half a billion people rely for food, income and storm protection. 

“Given these alarming developments, we need short, frequent, and easily accessible updates on the climate emergency,” said the study, published in the journal BioScience. 

The authors echoed previous calls for transformative change in six areas: eliminating fossil fuels, slashing pollutants, restoring ecosystems, switching to plant-based diets, moving away from indefinite growth models, and stabilising the human population. 

They also called for climate change education to be included in school core curriculums globally in order to raise awareness.

In the immediate term, they proposed a trio of emergency responses to the climate emergency. 

These consisted of “a significant carbon price”, a global phase-out and ban of fossil fuels, and the development of strategic climate reserves such as restoring and maintaining carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots. 

“We need to stop treating the climate emergency as a stand-alone issue -– global heating is not the sole symptom of our stressed Earth system,” said William Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University’s College of Forestry.

“Policies to combat the climate crisis or any other symptoms should address their root cause: human overexploitation of the planet.”

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The illegal mining of gold from Colombia’s rivers and waterways is on the rise, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime published on Tuesday.

More than 52,000 hectares of nature reserves — an area similar to the size of Madrid — was affected by illegal alluvial gold extraction in 2020, the UN said.

In total, more than 100,000 hectares — 69 percent of which is illegal — of one of the most biodiverse countries in the world show “evidence” of alluvial gold exploitation, the UN report said.

It’s a process of extracting gold from the sediment at the bottom of rivers and other waterways, and results in the waters being contaminated by mercury and other toxic substances.

It is “a worrying situation because it has ties to organized crime,” said Pierre Lapaque, the Colombia representative for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime representative, as he  presented the report in Bogota.

The study shows that alluvial gold exploitation increased slightly from 2019 when there were 98,000 hectares affected, 66 percent of which was done illegally.

Organized crime is behind this increase, the UN said, adding that it was mostly affecting the northern, northwestern and western regions.

Those regions are blighted by violence raging between left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug-traffickers battling for control of the lucrative drug and mineral extraction trades.

“These illegal organizations are a threat to biodiversity and create violence and poverty,” said the US ambassador in Colombia, Philip Goldberg.

The report did not say how much gold has been extracted illegally, nor its commercial value.

Colombian authorities say the total gold production in the country increased from 37.5 tons in 2019 to 47.8 tons the next year, when prices reached historic highs.

In more than half of the areas affected by gold extraction there are also coca leaf crops — the main ingredient in cocaine — the report said.

Colombia is the largest cocaine exporter in the world, much of it destined for the US.