Nike Zoom Pegasus Turbo 'White Gunsmoke'
Colorway: White/Gunsmoke/Vast Grey · Style code: AJ4114-102 · Release date: March 20, 2019 · Price: $2843 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Zoom Pegasus Turbo 'Black' (AJ4114-001) · Nike Zoom Pegasus Turbo 'Atmosphere Grey' (AJ4114-003) · Nike Zoom Pegasus Turbo 'Barely Grey' (AJ4114-060) · Nike Zoom Pegasus Turbo 'White Black' (AJ4114-101) · Nike Zoom Pegasus Turbo 'Blue Hero' (AJ4114-140)
ZoomX is the reason this shoe exists. Nike created the foam by modifying Pebax, a polyether block amide more usually found as insulation, into something lighter and springier than the compounds running shoes had used for decades. It first appeared publicly in 2017 under Eliud Kipchoge at the Breaking2 attempt in Monza, inside the Vaporfly, and research later credited that shoe with improving running economy by around four percent.
The Vaporfly paired ZoomX with a full-length carbon plate, and that combination is what eventually drew accusations of mechanical doping. The Pegasus Turbo took only half the recipe. It put ZoomX under an ordinary trainer, with no plate, and kept firmer foam beneath it for durability, since the racing foam on its own does not survive high mileage well.
The result was a training shoe at 180 dollars, well above what the standard Pegasus asked at the time. What buyers got for the difference was the sensation of a racing shoe without the racing shoe's short lifespan or its aggressive geometry.
White with gunsmoke and vast grey, released on 20 March 2019, is the least demonstrative colorway the model was sold in, which sits oddly on a shoe whose entire pitch was the foam you could see stacked underneath.