If there were no shoes (and hence no shoe sponsor money) of any sort, who would pay for the sport? I say this as a former pro cyclist who whole-heartedly agrees with you in principle. However, there is already hardly any money in pro running how it is. Whether that is a good or bad thing for society is another issue.
> If there were no shoes (and hence no shoe sponsor money) of any sort, who would pay for the sport?
I assume this means that major , public competitions would diminish in popularity, and fewer people pursuing the sport as a job would choose that sport.
I’m failing to see how either of those is objectively bad, though.
One of the points of the article is that the vaporfly isn't the first shoe to do this, in fact, it has been going on for decades now. Moving the tech back to 2015 would not achieve your goal of no energy return. So if there is some energy return allowed, how and where can we draw a line?