A New Era in Running: Sabastian Sawe’s Historic Achievement
Runners around the world were left in awe after witnessing Sabastian Sawe break the two-hour barrier at the London Marathon. The Kenyan athlete completed the 26.2-mile course in an incredible 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds — more than a minute faster than the previous record. This remarkable feat has sparked a conversation about the role of technology in modern athletics.
The key to Sawe’s success was his footwear. During the race, he wore the adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, a new “super shoe” designed to enhance performance. Weighing just 99 grams, this is the lightest racing shoe ever created by adidas. Despite its high price tag of £450, it is intended to be worn only once. The shoe features a stiff carbon-based structure that adds a “spring-like” bounce to each stride, helping runners move faster.
Patrick Nava, General Manager at adidas Running, expressed pride in Sawe’s achievement. He stated, “This is a testament to the years of hard work and dedication they have made, alongside our innovation team, who have built a supershoe which breaks new ground in the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3.”
The concept of super shoes first gained attention in 2016 with the launch of Nike’s Vaporfly. These shoes were initially banned after they helped Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge run the first sub-two-hour marathon outside of race conditions. However, new rules from World Athletics now allow supershoes in competitions, provided they have no more than one carbon-fibre plate and a midsole height not exceeding 40mm.
The Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 was unveiled on 23 April, just days before the London Marathon, and is the culmination of three years of research. Compared to its predecessor, the Evo 2, which weighed 138 grams, the new model is significantly lighter. Stephan Scholten, VP Product at adidas, explained their goal: “Our goal was two digits on the scale, with better performance than we’ve ever had.”
To achieve this, adidas developed its lightest foam to date, called Lightstrike Pro Evo foam. This material maximizes cushioning, propulsion, and energy return while a carbon-integrated system ensures the shoe remains stiff for stability. The unique interplay of foam and carbon redefines energy return, propulsion, and efficiency in a supershoe.
Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3: Key Specs
- Price: £450
- Weight: 99g
- Thickness: 39mm
- Colour: Cloud White / Core Black / Solar Turbo
- Materials: Lightstrike Pro Evo foam combined with carbon-fire elements and a rubber sole
To further reduce weight, adidas stripped back almost every component on the surface of the shoe. Even the smallest components, such as laces and stitching, were obsessively refined to deliver marginal gains that make the difference on race day. The outsole features strategically placed rubber in the forefoot to provide reliable traction at high speeds without adding too much weight.
“Creating the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 pushed us to think differently from the very start,” said Mr. Nava. “We weren’t just trying to improve on what we’d done before, we wanted to see how far we could go.”
After breaking the two-hour barrier, Sawe credited “the role of innovation,” likely referring to the super shoe. He said, “To break the world record is something I have dreamed about for a long time, and to achieve it means so much to me and to the sport of running.”
Despite coming in at 39mm in thickness (just below the 40mm limit set by World Athletics for road races), the success of the new shoe is likely to reignite the debate among the running community about “technological doping.” This debate first emerged in 2016 with the launch of Nike’s £240 Vaporfly shoes.
During the 2016 Olympic marathon in Rio, all three male medallists wore a prototype of the trainer, with the same technology extended to track races from 2018. Experts predicted the shoe improved the running economy of highly trained runners by four per cent compared to a normal shoe, boosting performance by three per cent.
“The same shoe gives you a massive variability among different athletes — even greater than 10 per cent in some cases,” says Professor Yannis Pitsiladis, of the International Olympic Committee. “How you respond to the shoe can determine if you’re going to be an Olympian or watch it on TV.”
The debate over super shoes isn’t new and first reared its head in 2016 with Nike’s £240 Vaporfly product raising concern among commentators and experts alike. Since then, the high-tech trainers have become almost ubiquitous among elite road runners. According to Jonathan Taylor, a sports researcher at Teesside University, this revolution in footwear development is a “technological arms race.”
Regulations were introduced in January 2020 over the sole thickness of track spikes used in sports other than high jump and long jump. However, experts suggest these rules are too lenient and should be stricter, to the point where air pods can’t be inserted into the spikes.
