Home > News

Potter breaks 5 km world record in newly released shoes

Scottish track and field Olympian-turned-triathlon runs 14:41 5 km in new Asics Metaspeed Sky shoes

Photo by: World Triathlon

Less than a week after the new Asics Metaspeed Sky was introduced, Scotland’s Beth Potter used the shoe to break the world record time for 5 km on the road. Her 14:41 is two seconds faster than Kenya’s Beatrice Chepkoech ran earlier this year to set the current world record. The amazing run performance comes just a week after Potter won the Super League Triathlon Arena Games London in dramatic style.

Whether or not Potter’s time will be ratified remains up in the air. According to athleticsweekly.com, while the event appears to have had the appropriate licensing and has a good record for accurate courses, it is not certain that many of the other requirements for a world record (drug testing, for example) were met.

Whether or not World Athletics deems Potter’s race a world record, it is a monstrous achievement for the former track and field Olympian. After representing Great Britain at the 2016 Olympics for the 10,000 m, Potter turned her sights to triathlon in 2017, taking the Funchal ETU Sprint Triathlon European Cup the same year she won the British 10,000 m championship and went to the World Athletics Championships. In 2018 she represented Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in both track and field and triathlon.

Related: Could Nike’s Vaporfly running shoes be banned from triathlon?

Potter really appears to have come into triathlon form over the last year. She won the final world cup of 2020 in Valencia and also took second at the Arzachena ITU Triathlon World Cup. Just last week she ran away from Lucy Charles-Barclay in the final leg of the Super League Triathlon Arena Games London for a dramatic win.  Unfortunately, her impressive form of late won’t be enough to get her to the Tokyo Olympics as British Triathlon has already named the three women who will compete in Tokyo – Vicky Holland, Georgia Taylor-Brown and Jessica Learmonth.

Potter’s record performance is also good news for Asics and the new Metaspeed shoes which were released late Monday night. Like every other shoe company, Asics has been scrambling to keep up with Nike since it launched the Vapourfly shoes in 2016. Numerous world records and personal best times have been set in the Nike shoes. Last week British marathon runner Chris Thompson got permission from his sponsor On Running to wear a pair of blacked-out Nike Vaporflys and qualifying for Tokyo at trials. Chepkoech is also sponsored by Nike.

Potter’s run makes her one of only three British athletes to have run under 15 minutes for 5 km, joining marathon legend Paula Radcliffe and Liz McColgan, who tweeted about Potter’s run.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Liz Mccolgan (@lizmccolgan)