Two runners, Sabastian Kimaru Sawe from Kenya and Yomif Kejelcha from Ethiopia, have broken the time of two hours for a marathon, the first time this has happened in competition conditions. At the London Marathon on April 26,  Sabastian Kimaru Sawe was the winning athlete with a time of 1:59.30. Yomif Kejelcha came second with a time of 1:59.41. Another Ethiopian athlete, Tigst Assefa Tessema, also made history at the event by setting a new women’s record time of 2:15.41. All three athletes wore the same shoes, the newly released Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 from adidas.

The sports company describes the shoe as the lightest Adizero model it has made so far. It announced the shoe just three days before the London Marathon, saying that it marked “a new era of supershoe innovation”. The footwear has since gone on sale in a “highly limited release” with a price-tag of €500 per pair. 

It builds on “a legacy of record-breaking performance”, adidas makes clear. As long ago as 2008, an early Adizero model was the footwear of choice when Haile Gebrselassie became the first marathon athlete to break two hours and four minutes over the distance. He achieved a time of 2:03.59 that year in Berlin. Since then, athletes have broken women’s and men’s records for the half-marathon, 5k, 10k and mile while wearing different Adizero iterations. The Adizero Adios Pro Evo ‘franchise’ launched in September 2023, since when the footwear technology has helped athletes break three world records, one Olympic record and seven national records. The shoes have helped deliver more than 30 major road race titles, including six (now seven) major marathon wins.

This latest version was, adidas says, engineered as the result of “a moonshot brief” to create a high-performing race shoe weighing less than 100 grammes. The average weight of the ones it has made so far is 97 grammes. The company says this makes the Evo 3 lighter by 30% than earlier Adizero versions.

It uses the lowest-weight version yet of a proprietary foam, weighing 50% less than earlier efforts. It has a stack of 39 millimetres at the heel for extra cushioning, dropping to 33 millimetres at the forefoot. Supporting the foam is new technology the company has called Energyrim, lightweight carbon material for what it describes as “precisely tuned stiffness” and for stability. This interplay of foam and carbon “redefines energy-return, propulsion and efficiency”, it claims.

The dedication, preparation and talent of the history-making athletes were, clearly, the most important factors in their London success. And according to the professor of applied physiology at the University of Exeter, Dr Andy Jones, several other human factors usually come into play when athletes break records.

Professor Jones was part of a team of experts that helped another Kenyan runner, Eliud Kipchoge, complete the marathon distance of 42.2 kilometres in a time of 1:59.40 in Vienna in 2019. This feat, for which Eliud Kipchoge wore footwear from Nike, never appeared in official record books because it was not an official race. It was a staged event. More than 40 other athletes were involved, but their role was to act as pacemakers.

Comments Professor Jones has shared with the BBC make it clear he thinks the Vienna event “blazed a trail” for what has now happened in London. He says: “Eliud Kipchoge did not have the benefit of competition. He was so much better than everybody else for those few years. He was streets ahead for quite a while.” In London in 2026, the field was “stacked with talent”, he observes, and athletes were able to race one another right into the final stages. “I think that made all the difference in maintaining speed through the second half of the race.”

The shoe helped too, though. A variety of technologies, including the sails that kite-surfers use, have inspired the upper. It is “stripped-back and ultra-lightweight”, adidas insists, to provide “a weightless feel”, but also a high level of support. The shoe has what it calls “precision detailing”, which includes “obsessively refined components, from laces to stitching” to deliver marginal gains. The outsole uses strategically placed rubber, sourced from tyre manufacturer Continental, in the forefoot.  This helps provide reliable traction at high speeds, but without compromising on its original lightweight requirements.

Chief executive, Bjørn Gulden, says: “Our Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 running shoe was part of creating history at the London Marathon. Sabastian Sawe, Yomif Kejelcha and Tigst Assefa were wearing the lightest and fastest shoe we have ever made. I am extremely proud of our fantastic athletes and our incredible teams who made this possible.”

It was clearly hard work. It took 12 attempts for adidas to produce a shoe that met all of the demands it imposed on itself, while also having the functionality to withstand lab-testing at company headquarters in Herzogenaurach and then field testing at high-altitude training camps in Kenya’s Rift Valley, which is where Sabastian Sawe, Eliud Kipchoge and many other champions in distance running come from.

Local people in the new record-holder’s home village, Barsombe, and Iten, where he went to school, are celebrating Sabastian Sawe’s success. His father, Simeon, and mother, Emily, told the BBC their son had lifted the spirits of the whole community and that they would hold a large party to celebrate his homecoming.

The country’s president, William Rufo, who comes from the same region, has said Sabastian Sawe has not only broken a record, but has “expanded the horizon of human potential”. He added: “You have done what many believed could not be done and, in so doing, you have inspired a nation, you have inspired a whole generation and you have inspired the world.” The president has offered the new marathon world-record holder a car of his choice and has also presented him with a personalised number-plate to use on the vehicle. The number-plate will make the car and its owner immediately recognisable. Its characters are ‘1 59 30’.

For his own part, the athlete says: “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. It reflects the hard work behind the scenes, the support of my team, and the role of innovation in helping me push beyond limits. I am honoured to be part of a new chapter for the sport.”