Adizero

A celebration of sport

On September 12th, 2021, over 90 world-class athletes arrived at the campus of adidas’ global headquarters in Herzogenaurach in Germany. This select group of adidas runners had been assembled for the inaugural Adizero: Road to Records event, which was established to celebrate both the athletes and their sport through a series of long-distance races. During the competition, each participant would be wearing a cutting-edge adidas running shoe which it was hoped might help some of them to a record-breaking day. Agnes Tirop and Senbere Teferi duly obliged, breaking the 10km and 5km world records, respectively, and showcasing the power of Adizero running shoes. These remarkable achievements were the long-term result of an ambitious design project that had been launched over 15 years earlier with one single aim: to craft a running shoe that would forever redefine speed.

The Omori design philosophy

The origins of the Adizero franchise go back to 2004, when innovative Japanese designer Toshiaki Omori was asked to create a new kind of running shoe. Having worked for adidas for five years already, he was well-versed in the brand’s athletic footwear technology and had developed a reputation for putting the anatomy of the foot at the centre of his design philosophy. Rather than using digital means to form the lasts for his designs, Omori deployed his own so-called “inside out” technique, which involved taking moulds of real feet. This produced shoes that fit almost perfectly around the foot in a way he named “Microfit”. Following this approach, Omori worked with scientists and engineers, putting together the best combination of materials in exactly the right amounts to provide excellent cushioning in a lightweight build. His team collaborated closely with top-tier athletes, testing prototypes in a range of different running formats, from treadmill intervals to full marathons in an extensive process of research and development. The goal was to construct a comfortable, durable and lightning fast shoe that could work symbiotically with the movements of the runner’s foot.

The Adizero Adios

Four years and hundreds of prototypes later, Omori presented adidas with the Adizero Adios – a shoe replete with high-performance features. Its sole unit was filled with a blend of compression moulded EVA foam and the brand’s proprietary adiPRENE foam, which offered superb impact absorption and comfort without adding too much weight. Alongside this, it contained the latest version of the adidas Torsion System, which stabilised the midfoot with a supportive bar that also allowed independent movement at each end of the shoe for a better transition from heel to toe. Allied with the soft, supple rubber of the outsole, this made the shoe highly flexible and easy to move around in. Finally, atop this lightweight, shock-absorbing sole was a breathable mesh upper whose minimalist construction ensured that the Adizero Adios was as fast as it possibly could be.

Haile Gebrselassie

With an exciting new running shoe in-hand, adidas decided that it needed to be put to the ultimate test on one of the brand’s most accomplished athletes. The man they chose was the highly decorated Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebrselassie. Already a successful 10,000m runner with multiple World and Olympic medals, Gebrselassie had switched his focus to the marathon and other road races in the early 2000s, and by 2007, he had established himself as one of the best in the world, setting a new world record of 2:04:26 at the Berlin Marathon. So, when he turned up to the same event in 2008, expectations were high, both from the fans and from adidas’ executives, who watched nervously as the Ethiopian star took to the track in Omori’s Adizero Adios.

Breaking barriers

Gebrselassie had only received his pair of Adizero Adios running shoes the night before the race. Normally, athletes are advised not to change any significant parameters so close to an important competition, but when the Ethiopian runner tried out the bright yellow colourway in the hotel corridor, he was instantly impressed, and the decision was made. Despite some setbacks in the run up to the race, which included skipping the Beijing Olympics due to health fears and being hampered by leg cramps during training, Gebrselassie clearly felt confident as he waited on the starting line. Year-on-year, he had been nearing the 2:04 mark in a marathon, and while he stood there on that cool, sunny morning in the German capital, he believed it could be his day. Turning to his management team, he gave them a signal of two and three, and a few moments later, he was off and running. In perfect conditions, Gebrselassie ran an exceptional race, putting himself in with a chance of surpassing both his own record and the 2:04 barrier. As he approached the final stretch, he had just one minute to cover the final 400m between the Brandenburg Tor and the finish if he wanted to achieve this incredible feat. He crossed the line with just one second to spare, his time of 2:03:59 making him the first person in history to complete a marathon in under two hours and four minutes.

An unofficial time

Over the next few years, Gebrselassie continued to run in the Adizero Adios, defending his Berlin title in 2009 and winning the Dubai Marathon two more times. Meanwhile, adidas running shoes were changing the sporting landscape, in particular coming to dominate the men’s marathon. While Gebrselassie’s record stood for almost another three years, the world record was officially broken three times between 2011 and 2014, and unofficially once, when Kenyan runner Geoffrey Mutai ran the 2011 Boston Marathon in 2:03:02. Unfortunately for Mutai, the event was not recognised by World Athletics as a world-record-setting location due to the beneficial tail winds and the gradual drop in altitude over the course of the race, so Gebrselassie’s record remained in place for another few months.

A new world record

The first person to officially break the 2008 record was another Kenyan athlete by the name of Patrick Majau Musyoki. While Mutai had been wearing the same shoe as Gebrselassie, Makau set his record in its successor, the Adizero Adios 2. Racing against the Ethiopian record-holder at the 2011 Berlin Marathon, Makau was determined to return the accolade to his home country after his compatriot Paul Tergat had held it between 2003 and 2007. Although Makau felt in poor shape before the race, he settled into a good pace, getting stronger and stronger throughout and, after Gebrselassie began to suffer from breathing difficulties around the 27th kilometre, he pulled away and never looked back, going on to win in a time of 2:03:38.

An upgraded design

At the end of Makau’s career in 2018, he made a point of thanking adidas for giving him some of the most well-made shoes he ever ran in, one of which was the Adizero Adios 2 he had been wearing to produce his world-record run. It represented an improvement on the original shoe, with a more responsive foam compound in the midsole and supportive suede overlays on the upper. A new Continental rubber outsole featured the so-called Quickstrike System, which involved small pieces of rubber on TPU platforms being attached to a fabric base. This provided an incredibly sturdy base that produced 20% more traction underfoot. The Torsion System had also been upgraded to incorporate three layers that, alongside generating stability, now increased the propulsive effect at toe off as well. Thanks to the exceptional work of adidas’ footwear engineers, all of this had been achieved without increasing the weight of the shoe by even a single gram over its predecessor.

The Boost foam revolution

Makau’s record stood for an even shorter period than Gebrselassie’s, barely making it more than two years before being beaten at the 2013 Berlin Marathon. Although broken at a familiar event, the record was set by a different runner wearing a different shoe. Wilson Kipsang was the man, and the shoe was the Adizero Adios Boost. The addition of the word ‘Boost’ to the name was no random act as this updated piece of footwear contained adidas’ brand new Boost cushioning – a revolutionary foam containing a matrix of thermoplastic polyurethane particles and tiny bubbles of air that made the midsole incredibly lightweight and responsive. This provided the runner with the necessary energy return to power through the later stages of the marathon while also offering them the cushioning support required over such a long distance. It was also highly durable and worked well in a variety of temperatures, so it could be used in the vastly different racing locations where marathon runners competed.

A determined runner

Added to the shoe’s other reliable features, like the Torsion System and the Continental rubber outsole, this new foam made the Adios Boost a force to be reckoned with, and Kipsang looked strong through the first half of the race. Nonetheless, he passed 35 kilometres around 20 seconds behind the pace needed to beat Makua’s record, with two other Kenyans alongside him: Eliud Kipchoge and Geoffrey Kipsang. Having fallen just four seconds short of the world record at the 2011 Frankfurt Marathon, Wilson Kipsang was determined not to do so again, and, in his own words, “attacked at 35km, as the pace had become a little too slow”. He pulled ahead of his compatriots with each kilometre and by the 40th, he was three-seconds ahead of world-record pace. On crossing the finish line, the margin had improved to a 15-second difference as Kipsang returned the men’s marathon record to Kenya.

Another record-breaking shoe

Kipsang’s stunning race demonstrated the energy-returning capabilities of adidas Boost, and over the next few years, shoes containing it became very popular. In 2014, the brand created the similar but slightly improved Adizero Adios Boost 2, which had the same sole unit and an improved upper that, as well as being more breathable, was also more durable owing to its suede panelling. It wasn’t long before the Boost 2 began breaking records, with the Berlin Marathon again providing the ideal conditions for the world’s fastest times. Less than one year after Kipsang had set his world record, yet another Kenyan runner, Dennis Kimetto, lined up with the ambition to break it. In a bright orange pair of Adios Boost 2 running shoes, Kimetto was pushed hard by Emmanuel Mutai in a fast race that saw both men go under the previous world record. However, it was Kimetto who was the victor, becoming the first person in history to run a marathon in less than two hours and three minutes with a time of 2:02:57.

Defying the heat

Just two months later, another Kenyan by the name of Felix Kandie reinforced the effectiveness of Boost-cushioning as he set a new course record at the infamous Athens Classic Marathon. The historic route is known for being one of the most difficult in the world due to its steep incline and hot conditions, but Kandie seemed to defy these challenges, pulling away from most of the other runners on the toughest parts of the race. Only two-time champion Raymond Bett was able to stay with him, pushing Kandie all the way to the 35th kilometre before giving up the fight to leave the Kenyan on his own. With his Adios Boost 2 defying the heat, Kandie crossed the finish line almost two minutes ahead of Bett in a time of 2:10:37.

A challenge approaches

2014 was another great year for the Adizero series, and it looked like adidas’ era of distance-running dominance would never end. However, unbeknownst to almost everyone in the running community, the brand’s biggest rival was secretly working on a bold technology that was about to change the sport forever. Agonisingly, it had initially been developed by adidas’ own engineers more than 15 years earlier, but they had abandoned it in the noughties. This groundbreaking innovation was the carbon-fibre plate.

The advent of the carbon-fibre plate

Carbon-fibre-plated running shoes really started to have an impact on the world of athletics in 2016, when Nike tested various prototypes during official competition. At the Rio Olympics, the entire podium for the men’s marathon was dominated by runners wearing an unnamed shoe with a stacked midsole that seemed to give them the edge over everyone else in the race. It turned out that this mysterious prototype had a stiff carbon-fibre plate set between two thick wedges of ultra-responsive ZoomX foam, the two elements combining to form the most powerful distance-running shoe ever seen. At the time, adidas simply had no answer, and, with the help of the great Eliud Kipchoge, Nike usurped the German company’s position as the owner of the fastest product on the market.

Struggling to keep up

Following the Rio Olympics, Adidas did everything it could to challenge Nike’s game-changing design, creating Boost Light foam – which, as its name suggests, was much lighter than the original cushioning material – and adding it to the latest marathon runner, the Adizero Sub2. This lightweight update to the Adios Boost was devised as a direct competitor to Nike’s Vaporfly, which the American company had revealed would be used in an attempt to break the two-hour marathon barrier for the first time in history in 2017. Nike failed that year, but in September, the brands had the chance to pit their very best shoes against one another at the Berlin marathon. Wearing his Vaporfly, Eliud Kipchoge lined up next to Wilson Kipsang in the Adizero Sub2, the latter confidently predicting victory in world record time, the former more quietly assured. With conditions not conducive to a fast race, the runners struggled to set the necessary pace to go under two hours, but were nevertheless quick, and at halfway, the world record remained under threat. At this point, both adidas and Nike athletes looked strong, with nothing able to separate the Adizero from the Vaporfly. However, Kipsang began to drop off the lead group after 30 kilometres, and Kipchoge ran away into the distance. It wasn’t all bad for adidas though, as another of the brand’s athletes stayed with Kipchoge. In what was his debut marathon, Guye Adola represented the Adizero Sub2 with a strong performance that saw him jostle for the lead with his Kenyan competitor over the next ten kilometres. In the end, Kipchoge’s experience proved crucial, and he took the victory a mere fourteen seconds ahead of Adola, whose time was the fastest ever by a debutant up to that point.

Admitting defeat

Despite Adola’s brave run, Nike had shown that its carbon-fibre-plated running shoes would be hard to beat, and in 2018, the brand’s dominance continued. Desperate to prove the capabilities of its Adizero series and Boost foam, adidas carried on entering its athletes into races with the Sub2 model, but as hard as they tried, Kipchoge and the Vaporfly always seemed to have too much for them. In Tokyo, Kipsang fell off the pace early, leaving Amos Kipruto as the highest-placed adidas athlete in third. He finished behind two runners in Nike shoes: Dickson Chumba and Japanese runner Yuta Shitara, who produced an almost unbelievable final ten kilometres to gain five positions and set new national and Asian records, thus demonstrating the fast finishing made possible by the Vaporfly. Kipsang returned to Berlin in September of that year, once again determined to defeat Kipchoge in a world record time. Amos Kipruto was there too, now wearing the Adizero Adios 3 rather than the Sub2, which Kipsang remained in. The adidas athletes were left reeling after just five kilometres as Kipchoge steamed away in one of the greatest marathon performances in history. By the end of the race, he was almost five minutes ahead of Kipruto, who took second, with Kipsang a further 25 seconds behind his adidas teammate in third. The winning time was a new world record, proving once and for all that, on the feet of the most elite athletes, carbon-fibre technology could not be beaten. Adidas finally relented and launched a project to create its own carbon-fibre footwear.

The first carbon-fibre Adizero

After his success with the original Adizero Adios, Omori was the man chosen to take the brand into the future once again. He designed the Adizero Pro; a shoe loaded with high-tech features, including Boost foam in the heel and a Continental rubber outsole with Quickstrike elements. It was the first adidas running shoe to contain the brand’s cutting-edge Lightstrike foam, which had been developed in 2018 and was supposedly lightweight and stable as well as being high in energy return. The shoe also had a brand new Carbitex carbon plate set between the Lightstrike cushioning and the sockliner, while its Celermesh upper was another innovation, being the brand’s thinnest-ever mesh for a lightweight feel and great lockdown.

Limited success

It was thought that this combination of advanced features would improve the running efficiency of the Adizero Pro to the point that it could compete with the Nike Vaporfly. However, this proved not to be the case, and despite some positive results, including at the 2019 New York Marathon, where Mary Keitany and Albert Korir took silver medals in the women’s and men’s race, respectively, it still struggled to achieve victory over the Vaporfly, which Geoffrey Kamworor had been wearing to finish ahead of Korir. The Pro even lost out to other adidas models, with the winner of the women’s race, Joyciline Jepkosgei, wearing the Takumi Sen 5 – another running shoe in the wider Adizero series. It was clear that adidas’ carbon-fibre plate needed some refinement, so the brand took another approach to the revolutionary technology.

Brand new innovations

The shoe that finally brought adidas back to the top of world marathon running was the Adizero Adios Pro. It took more than fifty staff over two years to produce, but the result was worth the effort. Announced in June 2020, the Adios Pro had been developed in concert with the brand’s fastest distance runners, such as Peres Jepchirchir and Rhonex Kipruto, whose feedback was used by the brand’s sports scientists, footwear engineers and expert designers to optimise everything about the shoe, from its weight to the design geometry and energy return. This led to a unique innovation known as EnergyRods that could finally rival Nike’s spoon-shaped carbon-fibre plate. It consisted of 5-6mm-thick carbon-infused bars which mirrored the shape of the metatarsal bones and thus worked with the natural anatomy of the body to reduce energy loss and improve the propulsive effect produced by the foot. The design also created dynamic flexibility and stiffness, which activated the larger leg muscles and generated maximum power through each step. Meanwhile, a carbon-fibre plate was placed in the heel to stabilise the ankle and support runners during the latter stages of a race, when fatigue could lead them to strike at the back of foot rather than the toe or midfoot. Surrounding these stiffening rods was an improved foam called Lightstrike Pro, which the brand described as its “most responsive foam compound yet that stores and returns energy”. It was manufactured by Chinese company Shincell, who implemented a new formula of Thermoplastic Polyester Elastomer to make the foam durable and quick to break in. Lightstrike Pro was also highly absorbent, which is what allowed the Adios Pro to return so much energy to the runner, helping their muscles to recover more quickly between races. A Celermesh upper completed the package, ensuring that it remained lightweight and breathable. The overall result was what the adidas blog referred to as “a supreme running flat” that established “an intuitive connection to the athlete” and which adapted to the “gait cycle” of each individual runner to “provide the most efficient, optimal running pattern.”

A breakthrough year

After the release of the Adizero Adios Pro, adidas began to challenge Nike once more with a series of statement performances in 2020. Peres Jepchirchir wore the shoe to win the half-marathon in two World Athletics tournaments, setting a new women only world record on both occasions, while Kibiwott Kandie broke the men’s half-marathon record by 29 seconds in Valencia with a vibrant yellow colourway on his feet. The same design was worn by the winner of both the men’s and women’s full marathon, with Evans Chebet and Jepchirchir both setting some of the fastest times ever recorded.  

Expanding the Adizero range

The Adizero line continued its success into 2021, and to honour its renewed vigour, adidas organised the inaugural Adizero: Road to Records event. This allowed the brand to showcase its most cutting-edge Adizero running shoes, including the Adios Pro and the Takumi Sen, which were going from strength to strength. During an unprecedented year for the company, Adizero shoes were responsible for seven new world records and 54% of victories in the top 50 global road races, in part thanks to the new Adios Pro 2. Revealed back in June of that year, the Pro 2 was said to be “built for speed on the road and the track”, with a lighter construction than its predecessor that came from its “re-engineered midsole”. Made from partially recycled polyester, this feature was incredibly lightweight, as were the Celermesh 2.0 upper and the redesigned heel, which provided significant lockdown that negated any slippage of the foot. The Lightstrike Pro foam remained alongside the trademark Energyrods, which were now partially visible along the underside of the shoe, and the Continental rubber outsole, so the Pro 2 had the same high-performance abilities as the original model. Together with this elite running shoe, adidas released other updated models in the Adizero range, including the Boston 10, which was designed with similar technology to the Adios Pro series but with a more durable build suited to everyday training, and the Adizero Prime X, whose imposing midsole stack was so high that it wasn’t allowed under new regulations introduced by World Athletics in 2020. This last model was created to “amplify the key features” of the Adios Pro 2, with both Energyrods and carbon-infused blades, making it doubly illegal in official races while boldly investigating the limits of running shoe technology.

The success of the Adios Pro 2

The Adizero Adios Pro 2 achieved yet more success, carrying the Adizero name strongly into 2022. Wearing the shoe, Ethiopian runner Tamirat Tola set a new championship record for the marathon at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, Jepchirchir took first place in a close Boston Marathon and Tigst Assefa ran the third fastest women’s marathon ever to achieve victory at the Berlin Marathon. Assefa’s run was particularly impressive; she took a massive 18 minutes off of her personal best and broke the championship record by nearly three minutes in what turned out to be a sign of things to come from the Ethiopian runner.

EnergyRods 2.0

In June, adidas brought out the Adizero Adios Pro 3, this time making a more significant change to the sole unit. While the Lightstrike Pro foam appeared in the same two energy-returning layers as before, the carbon-infused bars within had been upgraded to EnergyRods 2.0, which were fused together into “a single structure for harmonious stiffness.” No longer was there a separate plate in the heel; now the rods followed the metatarsal bones through the front part of the foot before looping around the back in one continuous piece. On top of this, the upper was even more lightweight than before, and the reliably grippy Continental rubber outsole remained underfoot.

The Year of the Adizero

This improved design helped adidas athletes to even greater results in the second half of 2022, leading the brand to declare it “The Year of the Adizero”. Wearing the Adios Pro 3, Kenyan athletes Amos Kipruto and Benson Kipruto took the titles just one week apart at the London and Chicago Marathons, respectively. Their compatriot Evans Chebet followed up his Boston Marathon win with victory in New York, becoming the first man to take first place at both events in the same year since 2013. After the race, in which he was nearly hit by the lead vehicle as it reacted to another athlete collapsing in the heat, Chebet said that the Adizero had helped him achieve his goals for the year, stating that “nothing is impossible” when running in the shoe. In total, athletes wearing Adizero silhouettes earned eight World Championship titles, broke two world records and won 50% of all the World Marathon Majors in 2022, making it an outstanding year for the brand.

Democratising running

At the end of 2022, adidas chose to honour the success of the Adizero line by taking some of its high-performance technologies and putting them into an affordable trainer that had more widespread appeal outside of the elite running community. Simply named the Adizero SL, it included Lightstrike Pro in the forefoot and Lightstrike EVA through the midsole, with an engineered mesh upper and extra padding across the tongue. As well as producing this supportive model for everyday runners, the brand launched Project PB: a collection of exclusive content available in the adidas Running app aimed at guiding people towards their own personal bests. In establishing initiatives such as this, adidas hoped to “democratise running” by providing everyone with access to the groundbreaking tools used by top athletes.

The lightest ever racing shoe

In 2023, things only got better for the Adizero, and in September, the range was expanded once more with its fastest shoe to date, the Adios Pro Evo 1. Described by the brand as “its lightest ever innovation-packed racing shoe”, this new model was exceptionally lightweight at just 138g, which made it 40% lighter than the nearest adidas super shoe. Inspired by the Adios Pro 3 and with feedback from a vast team of top-quality athletes, the brand’s expert engineers broke down every single component of the shoe to see where speed and energy-return could be enhanced. Intensive lab-testing produced a “first-of-its-kind forefoot rocker” that was “placed at 60% of the length of the shoe”, the aggressive design encouraging forward momentum, increasing economy of movement and propelling the runner from one step to the next. A new “non-compression molding process” was used to create the latest edition of Lightstrike Pro foam, which was both lighter and more energy-returning than before. In fact, almost everything about the shoe was optimised for a lightweight feel, including the liquid rubber outsole, which dropped the weight by around 70 grams, and the wafer-thin mesh upper. Even the sockliner had been removed to ensure that the Adios Pro Evo 1 was as light as it possibly could be, while its aesthetic reflected this with the use of see-through materials. Amongst the many athletes to provide data for the design was Tigst Assefa, who stated that it was “like nothing I’ve felt before”. The Ethiopian athlete had already accomplished much in adidas footwear, but the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 was about to support her through one of the greatest marathon performances in history. 

An incredible marathon

Having set new course and national records at the Berlin Marathon in 2022, and with adidas’ latest super shoe on her feet, Assefa turned up to the 2023 event in confident mood. Hampered by injuries throughout much of her career, she hadn’t had many opportunities to demonstrate her distance-running prowess outside of her 2022 victory, but on September 24th 2023, she grabbed the chance with both hands, going out quickly from the start. Often when the beginning is so fast, the latter stages tend to see athletes slowing down, but for Assefa, things only got more rapid as the race progressed. She recorded a negative split of almost a minute between the first and second halves, and by the end, she was running at almost the same pace as the winner of the men’s event, Eliud Kipchoge, moving from the 40th kilometre to the finish line a mere four seconds slower than the legendary Kenyan. Her astounding gold-medal-winning run was completed almost six minutes faster than the woman in second place, and Assefa’s time of 2:11:53 represented the first occasion that a female marathon runner had gone below 2:14, 2:13 and 2:12. It was also the first time that the women’s world record had been broken by a non-Nike shoe since 2001, while the last adidas athlete to break it was Grete Waitz in 1983.

Beating the competition

In 2024, the records kept on coming for the ultra-lightweight Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1. At the Tokyo Marathon in March, Benson Kipruto set a new course record of 2:02:16 in an updated version of the Pro Evo 1 that had a grippier outsole than the original model. One month later during the London Marathon, adidas demonstrated that the Adizero range was more than a match for Nike’s Vaporfly and Alphafly as the winners of the men’s and women’s races wore the Adios Pro Evo 1 v2. Both Kenyan runners, Alexander Mutiso Munyao triumphed in a strong time of 2:04:01, while Peres Jepchirchir took gold with a women’s only world record of 2:16:16. British runner Emile Cairess claimed third in the men’s race wearing the Pro Evo 1 in its original form, while adidas dominated the women’s podium, Tigst Assefa coming just seven seconds behind Jepchirchir in the same shoe, and a mere one second ahead of Joyciline Jepkosgei, who chose to wear the Adios Pro 3. Crucially, the fourth- and fifth-placed runners were wearing the Vaporfly 2 and the Alphafly 3, respectively, thus showing that Nike was no longer on its own at the top of distance running.

An Olympic showdown

Just a few months later, the two powerhouse footwear brands would have the chance to go up against each other on the biggest stage of them all at the Paris Olympics. Taking place on the last day of the competition, both the men’s and the women’s marathons were highly anticipated events. In the former, the great Eliud Kipchoge was looking to defend his title against in form adidas athletes like Benson Kipruto, while the latter would see a showdown between the new world record holder, Tigst Assefa, and winner of the 2023 London and Chicago Marathons, Sifan Hassan. It was the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 against the Alphafly, with both shoes being put to the test on a challenging Olympic marathon course that involved hundreds of metres of ascent and descent.

An unexpected champion

In the men’s event, one particularly tough section began around the 27th kilometre and continued at a 16% incline for about a mile, but it was here that the eventual race winner pulled away. However, it wasn’t Kipchoge or Kipruto who charged up the slope that day; it was Ethiopian reserve runner Tamirat Tola, who was only competing following an injury to his compatriot, Sisay Lemma. As Tola powered ahead of the lead pack in his white Adios Pro Evo 1 with its thick black three-stripes logo on the side, Kipchoge dropped out of the race entirely, and Kipruto fell back to finish over half a minute behind in third place. Belgian runner Bashir Abdi took second in another carbon-plated shoe, the Asics Metaspeed Edge Paris, but even he was no match for Tola, who set a new Olympic record with a time of 2:06:26.

A dramatic demonstration of speed

While the men’s race was won by a clear margin, the women’s race could not have been closer. In a strong field that included three-time World Marathon Major champions Hellen Obiri and Peres Jepchirchir, the lead pack contained several runners throughout most of the race, with Hassan hanging around at the back for much of the distance. By the final kilometre, though, just Obiri, Hassan and Assefa were left. It came down to a sprint finish and, while Obiri had nothing left for such a competitive end, Hassan and Assefa gave it everything coming into the last hundred metres, nearly colliding in the process. In the end, Hassan and her Alphafly beat Assefa and her Adios Pro Evo 1 by just three seconds, but both women finished ahead of the previous Olympic record in a dramatic demonstration of the speed generated by carbon-fibre running shoes.

A fierce rivalry and yet another record

This unforgettable drama was the result of the fierce competition that had emerged in the world of distance running over the previous decade, with Nike setting the standard early on, but soon being caught and matched by adidas thanks to the innovation of the Adizero series. Following the Olympics, the rivalry continued, and it wasn’t long before another record was broken by an adidas athlete. Ethiopian runner Yomif Kejelcha was the man to do it, completing the Valencia Half Marathon just one second ahead of Jacob Kiplimo’s 2021 time.

The latest innovations

At the end of 2024, the Adizero line evolved once more with the announcement of the Adios Pro 4 and the Evo SL. The Pro 4 was another model designed for top-level athletes to break records in and featured several updates over the previous version. Like the Pro Evo 1, it had a lengthy forefoot rocker that encouraged forward propulsion, and its midsole was packed out with Lightstrike Pro foam. Its innovative upper consisted of a “one-way stretch woven mesh… paired with internal locking bands for a snug and secure feeling when running at high speed.” Runners could also benefit from enhanced lockdown via the updated lacing system and better traction provided by the carefully mapped out grip patterns of the Lighttraxion outsole. While the Pro 4 catered to professional runners, the Adizero Evo SL was made for a broader audience, with Lightstrike Pro foam in the midsole and a breathable engineered mesh upper over the top. This pairing made it the lightest of all the brand’s training shoes and offered a more affordable option to casual runners.

Changing the sporting landscape

The running world was changed forever when Haile Gebrselassie crossed the finish line at the 2008 Berlin Marathon. Not only did he break a barrier that day, but his footwear did as well, initiating a period of dominance that was only halted by the introduction of a revolutionary technology. After several years under the shadow of the carbon-fibre plate, adidas emerged victorious once more thanks to an innovative development process that manipulated this cutting-edge technology in unique and inventive ways. The result was an unprecedented era of success for the brand’s Adizero running shoes during which competition with rival brands drove them all to record-breaking achievements. Whether it be the Adios Pro, the Boston, the Takumi Sen or the Adios Pro Evo, the outcome has always been the same: incredible performances by outstanding athletes in groundbreaking shoes.