Adidas’ Lightest Shoes Ever Were Behind the First Sub-2-Hour Marathon
And if the the same pair of shoes was responsible for three marathon world records – and the extraordinary feat of the first marathon completed in less than two hours?
The 2026 London Marathon is already a historic event, thanks to the time recorded by Kenyan Sabastian Kimaru Sawe. He is the first athlete to complete a 26.2-mile race in less than two hours, which has long been considered impossible for humans, crossing the finish line in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds.
The performance of Ethiopian Yomif Kejelcha, who stopped the clock just 11 seconds after Sawe, made the London Marathon even more memorable. Both performances shattered the previous record of 2 hours and 35 seconds set by Kelvin Kiptum in Chicago in 2023.
These resounding journeys were enriched with another twist. Supporters who filled the streets of the English capital witnessed another world record set by Ethiopian Tigst Assefa, who completed the women’s marathon in 2 hours, 15 minutes and 41 seconds.
Fancy shoes
Besides their talent and a lifetime of training, Sawe, Kejelcha and Assefa have another element in common: they each wore the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 shoe, which Adidas launched on the eve of the London Marathon. (The shoes will also go on sale soon for $500, but only through Adidas’ official app.)
The shoe that propelled the three runners to world performance records is the lightest sneaker model ever made by the German manufacturer. Weighing just 97 grams, the Evo 3 features carbon fiber elements integrated into the sole that improve the shoe’s rigidity. The Evo 3 uses Adidas’ Lightstrike Pro Evo foam, which is the company’s lightest and most elastic composite. The outsole features a rubber panel in the forefoot.
The new shoe was designed by a team led by Patrick Nava, an Italian engineer who arrived at Adidas in 2019 and who has headed the running division since last October. The Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 is the result of a long development process between tests in the company’s laboratories at the company’s headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany (about 200 km north of Munich) and high-altitude field tests in Kenya and Ethiopia that collected the sensations and reactions of athletes.
“It was a long process, because at the highest level, every detail really matters, so we measured everything down to the nanogram,” says Nava.
Springboards
The running world arrived at this new era for the sport during the first test drive of the new shoe. Adidas has been in fierce competition with Nike for years. The Oregon company has its own Breaking2 project aimed at making shoes that would allow runners to break the two-hour mark. In 2017, Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon in 2 hours and 24 seconds in Monza, Italy. He then broke the two-hour mark two years later in Vienna, Austria, stopping the clock at 1 hour, 59 minutes and 40 seconds. This time was not considered an official world record due to privileged racing conditions: it was not part of an officially sanctioned race and pacemakers took turns running with it.
But the Kipchoge races remain important milestones as we approach the historic time recorded by Sawe who, under the guidance of his trainer Claudio Berardelli, dedicated the last two years of his life to this challenge. This is his fourth marathon victory, and he underwent doping controls throughout the preparation period to rule out possible suspicions of an unprecedented performance.
This story was originally published by WIRED Italia and was translated from Italian.
