Just days after World Athletics belatedly introduced regulations to limit running shoe technology, Nike has courted further controversy with one that slips inside the rules and then hailing it as another “gamechanger”.

The US company confirmed its Air Zoom Alphafly Next% are based on the shoes worn by the Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge when he ran a marathon in under two hours in an unofficial race in October – a time nearly two minutes quicker than his legal world record.

But the new shoes, which look more like a platform boot than a traditional racing flat, will upset rival brands and athletes who believe it amounts to “technical doping” because Nike is using special foam and a carbon plate to create shoes that allow runners to go much faster than their competitors. Two sources who have tried the Alphaflys said they were ridiculously quick, with one adding that “even a little effort pushes you more forward than a regular shoe”.

Both also confirmed they are much quicker than the Nike Vaporfly, which have revolutionised marathon running since being introduced in 2016. Over the past 18 months Kipchoge and Brigid Kosgei have set men’s and women’s world records in versions of the shoe.

The Vaporflys have been shown to improve running economy by 4-5% – an improvement of around 90sec for an elite male athlete in a marathon – but there are some suggestions that the Alphafly could be worth more like 7-8%.

It has been suggested the Nike Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT% could add 7-8% to running economy. Photograph: Nike

That will raise eyebrows. However Nike said the Alphafly will be legal when it is released this summer. The company say its shoe has only one carbon fibre plate and a sole thickness of 39.5mm, which means it comes under the 40mm limit set last Friday by World Athletics.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nike will also offer the shoe in limited quantities online by the end of the month, meaning it will also meet World Athletics’s requirement for new shoes to be available to the public by April in order to be eligible for the Tokyo Olympics starting in July.

“We are pleased the Nike Zoom Vaporfly series and Nike Zoom Alphafly NEXT% remain legal,” a Nike spokesperson said. “We will continue our dialogue with World Athletics and the industry on new standards.”

The Nike vice-president, Tony Bignell, claimed World Athletics’s new rules had forced it to think differently, despite the regulations being only a week old. “Barriers are inspiring to innovators,” he said. “Like athletes, when a barrier is in front of us we are challenged to think differently and push gamechanging progress in footwear design.”

Rival brands are known to be frustrated by the number of patents Nike has taken out on its shoe technology, which makes it hard for anyone else to catch up. Last week the New Balance executive, Tom Carleo, said his company had developed shoes with technical foams and carbon fibre plates but it was “very concerned by the fact that these rules were adopted without meaningful consultation involving sporting goods industry representatives and companies”.

Nike has also launched a new Viperfly sprint shoe, designed for the 100m, which does not meet World Athletics’ new regulations. The company said it would now be working to modify the shoe for use.