Adidas innovation underpins Sawe's historic sub‑two marathon in London

LONDON, April 28 : Kite-surfing fabrics, car tyres and shortened shoelaces helped Kenyan Sabastian Sawe and Adidas crack the two‑hour marathon barrier.

When Sawe shattered one of athletics' most elusive barriers in storming to victory at the London Marathon in ​one hour 59 minutes and 30 seconds on Sunday, it did not come from just physiology and grit, but from design choices drawn from far beyond the course.

Sawe debuted Adidas' lightest‑ever racing shoe, the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, designed to deliver marginal gains at the elite end of the sport - and they were realised in full by Sawe on Sunday.

"It starts with the mentality of the athlete, the coach, and the team behind the product, which is: what can we do better? What is the 1 per cent of every single detail that we can improve?" Patrick Nava, Adidas' general manager of running, told Reuters.

"And so we got to a product that is 97 grammes, which is 30 per cent lighter than the previous iteration.

"We did four things. We worked on the outsole. We left traction only where you need it. We took it away where you don't. And worked together with (tyre manufacturer) Continental to create an extremely thin rubber piece."

The largest weight saving came in the foam, with Adidas cutting the weight of its Lightstrike Pro Evo foam by 50 per cent from the previous version.

"We looked at other industries for inspiration for the upper," Nava said. "In this case, you have a material that is inspired by what you can find in kite-surfing, extremely light but also extremely durable." 

Even the laces were redesigned and shortened, saving a further two to three grammes.

The result, Nava said, is a shoe that improves running economy by 1.6 per cent compared with the already market‑leading Evo