The shoe designed for one race
On the morning of September 24, 2023, Tigst Assefa crossed the finish line on Straße des 17. Juni in Berlin and raised a shoe above her head. Not a trophy. A shoe.
She was right to. What she raised was the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1, a 138-gram slab of carbon-fiber rods and milled foam that had just helped her break the women’s marathon world record by two minutes and eleven seconds. The previous mark — 2:14:04, set by Brigid Kosgei at the 2019 Chicago Marathon — had looked durable. Assefa didn’t chip at it. She became the first woman to break the 2:14, 2:13, and 2:12 barriers in a single race.
She was not supposed to be a marathon runner. Born in Holeta, Oromia, in 1996, she spent her early career as a middle-distance specialist, representing Ethiopia in the 800m at the 2016 Rio Olympics. An Achilles tendon injury that same year ended her track career; her coach shifted her to roads to let the injury heal. She ran her first marathon in Riyadh in 2022. Eighteen months later, she stood at the start line in Berlin wearing shoes that barely existed yet.
The Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 had been developed at Adidas’s lab in Herzogenaurach, Germany, with input from Assefa and a handful of other elites. The engineering brief was extreme: push the World Athletics stack-height limit of 40mm to within a millimeter, carve the midsole from a solid foam block by CNC milling rather than compression-molding, and strip out every gram that wasn’t essential. The result weighed 138 grams — 40 percent lighter than the standard Adios Pro 3. Only 521 pairs were produced. Cards inside the box stated that each was designed for “one race — one marathon — plus familiarization time.” Single-use footwear, priced at $500.
Before the race, Assefa described the sensation: “This is the lightest racing shoe I have ever worn. The feeling of running in them is an incredible experience — like nothing I’ve felt before.” She then ran the second half of the race faster than the first — 1:05:33 to 1:06:20 — finishing in 2:11:53 and raising that shoe skyward at the end. The shoe was designed for one morning. The record is permanent.
What the Evo 1 made undeniable is that the super-shoe era had no visible ceiling. Nike’s Vaporfly had opened the carbon-plate era in 2017; by 2019, athletes wearing Vaporfly shoes claimed 31 of 36 podium positions across the six major marathons. Adidas had spent six years building a response. Within World Athletics’ tight specifications — 40mm stack, one plate — manufacturers had found room to keep pushing, and Assefa’s run proved there was still room to find.
The 2023 Berlin Marathon was the moment the sport understood that the new rules were permanent. The shoe in Assefa’s hand was not a trophy. It was a question.
Sources
- Tigst Assefa — Wikipedia — biographical details, career path from 800m to marathon, Achilles injury, and 2023 record splits.
- 2023 Berlin Marathon — Wikipedia — race date, finishing time, results context.
- Adidas super-shoe takes technological arms race to new level — ABC News Australia — shoe specifications, Herzogenaurach development, Assefa’s quote, Vaporfly dominance data.
- Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 — Time Best Inventions 2023 — 521-pair production run, single-use designation.