Sabastian Sawe’s run through London in one hour 59 minutes and 30 seconds rewrote one of distance running’s most stubborn lines not only through the athlete’s preparation, but through a concentrated effort in product design that pulled ideas from tyre engineering, water‑sport fabrics and careful weight shaving.
The shoe Sawe wore, the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, is Adidas’ lightest racing model to date. The company says it weighs 97 grammes, a reduction of roughly 30% versus the prior Evo iteration. Adidas’ team framed the development around incremental improvements across multiple components, the kind of marginal gains that add up at the elite level.
"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% of every single detail that we can improve?" Patrick Nava, Adidas’ general manager of running, told Reuters. Nava described four principal areas of work that produced the weight savings and performance gains.
First, the outsole. Adidas removed traction from zones where it is not required and retained it only where necessary. The company collaborated with tyre manufacturer Continental to produce an "extremely thin rubber piece," according to Nava. That collaboration targeted the balance between grip and mass, seeking the lowest possible weight without sacrificing the contact needed for elite road racing.
Second, the foam. The largest single reduction in weight came from the Lightstrike Pro Evo foam, which Adidas cut in weight by 50% from the previous version. That reduction contributed significantly to the overall 97 gramme figure.
Third, the upper. Adidas looked beyond footwear for inspiration and adopted a material influenced by kite‑surfing: a fabric described as both very light and highly durable. That choice aimed to preserve structural integrity while stripping grams from the packaged shoe.
Fourth, even the laces were revisited. They were shortened, saving an extra two to three grammes. Taken together, these adjustments produced a shoe that, Adidas calculates, delivers a 1.6% improvement in running economy compared with the Evo 2.
At the elite marathon distance, such a percentage can be decisive. Adidas framed the Evo 3 as a specialist, not a mainstream consumer shoe. Nava compared it to a Formula One car: an ultimate expression of performance intended first for competition and development, not immediate mass distribution.
When Adidas released a few hundred pairs on Monday, they sold out online in two minutes. The company has said additional limited drops will occur in the coming weeks, and it plans a more commercial version in the second half of the year that will carry much of the same technology in a package aimed at broader demand.
How the shoe fits into the super shoe era
Sawe’s run comes more than a decade after an early prototype of modern carbon‑plate racing shoes appeared on the world stage. The wider adoption of these so‑called super shoes reached a turning point when a rival brand’s Vaporfly made a decisive impact at the Olympic Games and in major marathons. The debate around their effect on performance has been ongoing, and Sawe’s sub‑two hour performance places Adidas’ latest engineering at the center of the discussion.
Geoff Burns, a sports researcher and engineer who has worked as a sports physiologist for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees, described to Reuters what he perceives as a broader benefit of the curved plate and responsive construction beyond lap‑time reductions. Burns said the sensation during runs in these shoes can feel similar to cycling, where motion carries forward with less perceivable trauma to the legs.
"Because of that curved plate, there’s this like perpetuality to the motion that just feels like your legs are turning over more effortlessly or more naturally," Burns said. He suggested that the shoes not only reduce race times but also enable athletes to undertake more specific and faster training at marathon pace or close to it because the shoes reduce the damaging impact of repetitive miles.
Burns noted that, whereas elite marathoners had typically covered up to 140 miles a week, athletes now may run 150, maybe 160, maybe even 170 miles a week. The implication, in his view, is that the shoe technology facilitates higher volumes of faster work.
Commercial strategy and what comes next
Adidas’ creative and innovation leadership signaled that the moment in London is already a prompt to look forward, rather than a finish. Marc Makowski, Adidas’ senior vice‑president creative direction & innovation, said conversations with Sawe after the race included the athlete’s belief that he can run faster yet, a view the company shares.
For Adidas, the Evo 3’s limited distribution and rapid sell‑outs function both as a demonstration of elite capability and a testbed for technologies that will be adapted into more accessible models. Nava said the company expects a cascade effect: innovations will appear first in a specialist racing shoe and later in consumer products that bring much of that performance to broader markets.
That strategy underscores the brand’s approach: extract marginal gains in controlled, competitive settings, then translate successful elements into scaled products. The immediate commercial impact is limited by the constrained supply of the racing model, but the longer run plan is to diffuse the benefits into more widely available shoes later in the year.
What this means for sport and industry
Sawe’s historic run highlights the convergence of sports science and industrial design. Materials science, tyre engineering and human performance data combined in a single package to produce a result that both resets expectations on the road and offers a clear roadmap for product development within footwear companies. The win also reinforces the role of specialist products as platforms for innovation that ultimately aim to influence mainstream offerings.
As Adidas continues limited drops and readies a broader commercial model, the industry will be watching how quickly the technologies demonstrated in London reach everyday runners and what that diffusion means for training, retail demand and competition among major sports brands.