The upper of Cloudboom Strike LS is made from a single piece of stringy material which is sprayed and woven into the shape of a foot by a robot arm, then thermally fused onto a bouncy midsole.Supplied
A running shoe and apparel company recently launched a cutting-edge, laceless, robot-made racing sneaker; Olympians wore them in Paris, and soon, for a crisp $450, you will be able to don them, too.
The Swiss brand On made the sports world gasp in July when it released its latest running shoe, the Cloudboom Strike LS (short for Light Spray). The upper of the shoe is made from a single piece of stringy material which is sprayed and woven into the shape of a foot by a robot arm at the company’s headquarters in Zurich, and then thermally fused onto a bouncy midsole. The sneaker takes three minutes to make, weighs a feather-light 170 grams, and has no shoelaces, because the material is malleable and moulds itself into the shape of the wearer’s foot without need for extra tightening. As an added bonus, the localized manufacturing process emits 75 per cent less CO2 than is emitted making a regular shoe upper.
The off-white slipper, which will hit the market this fall at roughly triple the price of a standard training shoe, looks more like hospital footwear or a bleached Yeezy than a high-performance running shoe. Ilmarin Heitz, senior director of innovation at On, said the Cloudboom Strike LS was made with the intention of being one of the fastest racers in the world; a handful of runners have sported them in the Olympic marathon, and Kenyan runner Hellen Obiri wear-tested them at this year’s Boston Marathon, which she won handily.
Kenyan athlete Hellen Obiri wear-tested the Cloudstrike Strike LS at this year’s Boston Marathon.Supplied
Obiri’s success, but also her shoe’s ridiculously futuristic build and design process, begs the question of whether or not the sneakers we all wear are about to fall out of style and be rendered obsolete by sleeker, improved footwear.
The Cloudboom Strike LS is only the latest – albeit most stunning – chapter to a near-decade-long period of supercharged running-shoe innovation that has been difficult to follow for even the biggest of sneaker-heads. It began at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, where Nike surreptitiously introduced carbon-plated racing shoes meant to make people 4 per cent faster. It then continued with brands relentlessly launching bigger, faster and pricier racing shoes, so far culminating with the release of the Adidas Pro Evo 1: a US$500 racing shoe that is so light and responsive that it helped Ethiopian Tigst Assefa to set a new women’s world record in the marathon of two hours, 11 minutes: three full minutes faster than the previous mark, and 12 minutes faster than the Canadian record.
Ethiopia's Tigst Assefa crosses the finish line as the first woman to finish the Berlin Marathon, on Sept. 24, 2023.Reinaldo Coddou H./Supplied
But not all innovations have been home runs: There were also shoes that ostensibly responded to the wearer’s hormone levels (a dubious claim met with much ridicule by shoe experts), sneakers with separate boxes for each toe, and the rise and fall of an ill-advised minimalist running boom that convinced a generation of runners to try running with no shoes at all. (I briefly did it in high school and still have the calloused feet of a jungle monkey to prove it – don’t do it.)
And now that we have achieved robot-made shoes designed to make you faster, is there any sense in buying Nike Frees any more? Should you stop purchasing that model of Brooks, Asics or New Balance trainers that you have worn since participating in your middle school Terry Fox Run or community turkey trot? Short answer: not unless you are concerned with having the coolest kicks. Keeping up with brands’ top shoes is bound to become more difficult as they continue to fight for supremacy and produce increasingly pricey, tech-y and arcane footwear. But there is also huge interest to serve an expanding sea of recreational or sub-elite runners; a faction that has grown by 33 per cent since the pandemic.
Under the headline and glitz of robot-made or hyper-fast running shoes is a useful and sophisticated market of sneakers tailored for every occasion and challenge: your fastest-ever marathon, a 100-kilometre road race, a long and sustained workout, fast interval training, your first 5k and standard recovery runs. The company On itself, which, along with running-shoe maker Hoka has disrupted the shoe industry enough to contribute to Nike’s recently dwindling stock price, has more than a dozen new running shoes on the shelves this year: the Cloudsurfer is for wet runs, the Cloudultra for long trail runs, and the Cloudmonster Hyper for hard road workouts, among others.
So, gone may be the days of wearing the same sneakers as our running heroes (until On replicates this robot arm in a city near you), but this continuous wave of innovation is ultimately a good thing for shoe buyers and gear nerds alike: faster, greener, more tailored products are a win for everyone. And, yes, when in doubt, buying the new model of your classic running shoe – whether robot-made or not – still works just fine.
Other Shoe Innovations
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Ultra shoes
Ultra runners who participate in races 50 kilometres and longer have a niche problem: the soles of their shoes disintegrate mid-race, under the constant pounding. Mount to Coast, a Hong-Kong-based company, created products to address that problem with the R1 and S1: shoes with foam that keep their integrity under the pressure of hours of constant running. So, yeah, there goes your excuse for not running ultras.
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Illegal training shoes
In 2020, shoes taller than 40 millimetres became illegal in World Athletics running races, such as the Olympics and major marathons, because they were suspected to give athletes an unfair advantage. But that says nothing about training: Companies have since come out with hulking training shoes, made more for support than speed – the most of which being the Adidas Prime X Strung, which comes with a fat, 50 mm stack of foam.
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Sneakers made out of beans
The On Cloudrise Cyclon is a 95-per-cent recyclable running shoe whose upper mesh and midsole foam are made from caster beans. It’s part of On’s subscription-based circularity program which, for $34 a month, allows people to order a new pair of shoes made of recycled materials every six months, and then send them back to be recycled for parts once they are worn out.
Gender-specific shoes
Lululemon's Blissfeel for women, above, and men's Beyondfeel shoe, below.Supplied
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Lululemon’s Blissfeel for women and Beyondfeel for men have yet to solidify themselves as top-tier running shoes. For now they may be best suited for the gym, but the concept of gender-specific footwear is intriguing. To their credit, the Blissfeel’s narrow heel and wide toe box was conceived to match the average shape of women’s feet, after years of research into the differences between male and female foot shapes.