(Bloomberg) — While athletes and spectators are enchanted by not one, but two men, German sporting goods maker Adidas AG also has reason to celebrate.
Kenyan Sabastian Sawe and Ethiopian Yomif Kejelcha crossed the finish line this Sunday wearing the brand’s new, ultralight, $500 running shoes.
Sawe opened up a lead over Kejelcha in the final moments of the race to achieve an impressive world record of 1 hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds, more than a minute below the event’s previous best. Kejelcha finished just 11 seconds behind, a remarkable feat in his first competition at the 26.2-mile (42.2-kilometer) distance.
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In the women’s race, Ethiopian Tigst Assefa broke away from Kenyan Hellen Obiri in the last mile to win with a time of 2 hours, 15 minutes and 41 seconds, slightly better than last year, when she broke the world record in a women’s only race.
For all three, the common denominator was Adidas’ Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, a sneaker that the company presented on Thursday and which weighs just 97 grams in a standard size. It’s the lightest version ever produced of the type of running shoe that transformed the sport of long-distance running over the last decade.
“This is a testament to years of hard work and dedication from them, along with our innovation team, who have built a ‘super shoe’ that breaks new boundaries,” said Patrick Nava, general manager of running at Adidas.
Obiri wore On Holding AG’s LightSpray Cloudboom Strike, a $330 slip-on running shoe made by robots. She broke her own personal record by coming second in the women’s event, behind Assefa.
Sawe even surpassed the time of Eliud Kipchoge, who in 2019 ran the distance in 1h59min40s in an event organized by Nike, in Vienna, which was not eligible for a world record. On that occasion, a series of runners set the pace for Kipchoge for most of the race.
In London, Sawe and Kejelcha pressed each other in the final kilometers, long after they had left the official pacesetters behind.
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For brands, having a high-profile winner wearing their latest model adds a seal of legitimacy. And the running shoe market is booming: in the US, it grew 13% in the 12 months to February, to US$8.1 billion, according to consultancy Circana LLC. It’s an important slice of the broader performance sneaker category, which could reach $104 billion in global sales by 2030, according to data from Euromonitor.
Adidas has been rebuilding its running franchise in recent years, trying to capitalize on the sport’s growing popularity — which has helped drive the rise of challenger brands like Hoka, On and Brooks. The German company has benefited from strong demand for the comfortable $150 Adizero Evo SL, a less extreme version of the marathon shoe worn by Sawe and other athletes.
The focus on running is part of chief executive Bjorn Gulden’s efforts to extract more profit from the sports performance line and reduce the brand’s reliance on fashion items such as the Samba and Gazelle sneakers.
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(Corrects spelling of Sabastian Sawe’s name in second paragraph.)
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