Mimura, for example, made shoes for the 2000 Sydney Olympics gold medalist, Naoko Takahashi, with soles of slightly different thicknesses to compensate for a leg-length discrepancy of 8mm–less than a centimeter, about a third of an inch, according to reporter Jere Longman.

Longman, a longtime follower of the sport and sometime marathoner himself, concludes the article with a vivid simile from Mimura himself on the importance of running shoes:

“Samurai cannot fight without their swords,” Mimura said. “It is the same for runners and their shoes.”