Does Talking About Marathon Sneakers Diminish Feats of Athletic Greatness?

Adidas won so big at the London Marathon that even Nike joined in congratulating its rival's athlete.

Hi everyone, welcome back to SportsVerse, my twice-weekly newsletter that tells stories you can’t find anywhere else about the intersection of sports, fashion, business, and culture.

Nothing helps sell running shoes like athletes breaking records in them.

Adidas had a dream showing in this regard at the London Marathon on Sunday, where not one but two of its athletes (Sabastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha) wearing the new Adios Pro Evo 3 supershoes completed the race in under two hours, shattering a barrier in men’s long-distance running many thought was impossible. Meanwhile, in the elite women’s race, Tigst Assefa defended her title in London and broke the previous women’s marathon record time (which she had set herself), also wearing the same shoes as Sawe and Kejelcha.

Sawe’s history-making footwear.

Now, let’s be clear: the story here is about the mind-blowing achievements that saw Sawe and Kejelcha breaking the long-standing two-hour barrier in the men’s marathon, and about Assefa’s record-breaking run in the women’s category. Some have rightfully pointed out that for the post-race discourse to focus on the shoes and the brands that made them diminishes the achievements of athletes last weekend. But luckily, this is SportsVerse, where we can feel equally comfortable discussing moments of sporting history while analysing the strategy of the surrounding brands in the same breath.

For example, we can understand the sporting significance of Sawe’s victory by analysing the fact that even Nike was compelled to publicly congratulate him (shock-horror, an Adidas athlete) with a dedicated post on the brand’s Instagram page, lauding his history-making 1:59:30 marathon time. Anyone with knowledge of Nike’s ethos (or that of any major sportswear brand) will know that acknowledging a rival company’s athlete is a big departure from how things are usually done, especially given how much money and marketing Nike poured into its 2017 “Breaking2” event in which Eliud Kipchoge tried to be the first to run 26.2 miles in under two hours. I think we need more of this behaviour in the sportswear market, which can feel a little too tribal sometimes.

A Big Win For Adidas

As I said at the beginning of this article, nothing helps sportswear brands sell shoes like athletes breaking records in them. This is especially true in the running category, which drives such a large proportion of footwear sales for the major sportswear companies and is a key battleground in the never-ending tug of war between Nike and Adidas, given how long-distance running adoption and marathon culture continue to boom among everyday consumers.

The fact that Adidas stock rose as much as two percent on Monday, the first trading day after the race, also pointed to the dual sporting and commercial significance of the moment.

The shoe in question, which will forever go down in sportswear history as the model which helped Sawe become the first athlete to complete a sub-two-hour marathon, was launched by Adidas in limited quantities over the weekend, with a wider release scheduled for the fall marathon season. The long-distance running “supershoe”, which is Adidas’ first shoe to weigh less than 100g, retails at $500. There couldn’t possibly have been a better launch imaginable than the outcome at the London Marathon on Sunday, in both the men’s and the women’s categories. Adidas will be assured that, come the wider release in the fall, the shoe will almost certainly sell out, and its high-profile success will create a positive halo effect on the rest of Adidas’ more reasonably priced running assortment.

People will be quick to describe this as a big win for Adidas and a big loss for Nike. There has been something of a public Nike pile-on of late, given: 1) the aggressive stock selloff following the brand’s latest underwhelming quarterly earnings for the period ended Feb. 28, and 2) the now infamous “runners welcome, walkers tolerated” poster which drew criticism at the Boston Marathon. (For what it’s worth, I think that criticism was unfair and the situation was blown far out of proportion on the internet.) I’m sure it will have hurt certain folk at the Swoosh that it wasn’t one of their athletes who was first to break the milestone, but Adidas’ gain does not automatically equal Nike’s loss in this instance. Anyone who would have you believe things are so binary does not have a firm grip on how the industry actually works.

The running category is actually one of the few bright spots of growth in Nike’s business right now, and a fundamental vertical on which an eventual turnaround will hinge. It’s also not as if Nike is miles off its rival in the supershoe conversation: at the London Marathon, third-placed Jacob Kiplimo wore a pair of Nike Alphaflys.

The credit of course must go to the two athletes, Sawe and Kejelcha, whose legs and hearts carried the 26.2-mile course in a time many believed wasn’t humanly possible not too long ago. But it’s impossible to dissect their performance without considering the hundreds of thousands of hours of scientific research and development which went into manufacturing, designing and testing the footwear technology which supported them and their rivals in pushing ever closer to times and records that were unthinkable in eras gone by.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM