Did Nike Accidentally Make This Running Shoe Too Good?

In most cases, a professional runner winning one of the most prestigious races in the world would be good news for the athlete’s shoe sponsor.

But when Milkesa Mengesha broke the tape at the 2024 Berlin Marathon with a time of 2:03:17, he may have put Nike’s marketing team in something of a pickle.

That’s because Mengesha, a 24-year-old Nike athlete from Ethiopia, wasn’t wearing Nike’s newest marathon racer, the Alphafly 3. Nor was he wearing the current-gen Vaporfly 3 that’s been available for over a year.

Instead, Mengesha opted for the Vaporfly Next% 2, a discontinued version of Nike’s famously fast super shoe that debuted all the way back in 2021. And commenters have been quick to point it out on Nike’s Instagram post congratulating Mengesha.

So what’s the shoe still doing at Major marathons, let alone on podium of one as important as Berlin?

In it for the long run

For the record, Mengesha’s decision to race in the Vaporfly Next% 2 didn’t come out of left field. In fact, he’s far from the only elite runner who seems to prefer it over the followup version now sold by Nike.

When the late Kelvin Kiptum won the 2023 London Marathon, he also did it in a pair of the Vaporfly Next% 2. But its successor had only just come out, so it was easy to dismiss Kiptum’s bias as a lack of experience in the newer model. (He later switched to the Alphafly 3, with which he set the current world record.)

Jack Seemer for Gear Patrol

Joshua Cheptegei, meanwhile, has had ample time to adapt. And, just like Mengesha, he hasn’t.

The current world-record holder in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters recently raced the 10-mile Dam tot Damloop in the Netherlands wearing the discontinued Vaporfly Next% 2.

What’s more, his pair came in the ostrich-inspired Electric colorway released ahead of the Paris Olympics this past summer — more than a year after Nike stopped selling the Vaporfly Next% 2 to the general public.

That suggests Nike is not only aware that some of its athletes prefer discontinued versions of the Vaporfly but that it continues to produce the shoe behind the scenes for the top-level pros.

Amateurs, too, have been slow to adopt the Vaporfly 3, which retails for $260 and gets a color refresh every few months.

Nick Bare, the CEO and founder of BPN supplements who has over 1 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, still runs in a discontinued version of the Vaporfly Next% (albeit the very first version that came before the Vaporfly Next% 2).

“I keep going online and finding sites that have the older version of the Vaporfly,” Bare said in a video posted in August 2024.

“They look fast, they feel fast, they are fast,” he added. “They’re very tight. They’re more narrow.”

But what’s actually better?

Compared to the Vaporfly 3s, previous generations of the Vaporfly indeed featured a more aggressive plate geometry. That gave them a springier toe-off that, combined with less foam in the midsole, resulted in a more responsive shoe overall.

Photo by Jack Seemer for Gear Patrol

Ultimately, however, the decision to run in one shoe over another may be less about what is better but what feels more natural to the person lacing them up.

For elites like Mengesha and Cheptegei, who arrive at longer distances by way of the track, it’s simply possible that the streamlined Vaporfly Next% 2 runs closer to the flats or spikes they’re used to.

Of course, Nike’s marketing team might prefer they opted for the latest and so-called “greatest.” But, at the end of the day, the most important thing is winning. And both Mengesha and Cheptegei happen to be very good at that.

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