Assefa kissed and the raised the shoe above her head in celebration after the race in Berlin
The battle for supremacy among running’s biggest brands intensified on Sunday when the women’s marathon world record was obliterated in a pair of new ultra-light £400 Adidas super shoes that are supposedly designed to last for just one race.
Ethiopia’s Tigist Assefa became the first woman to not just run the 26.2 mile distance in under 2hr 14min but also beat 2hr 13min and 2hr 12min when she won the Berlin Marathon in 2hr 11min 53sec, shaving 131 seconds off Brigid Kosgei’s 2019 landmark.
Kosgei’s record, which itself beat Paula Radcliffe’s 2003 world record of 2hr 15min 25sec, was also set in the era of the new super-cushioned carbon-plated shoes that emerged in 2016 with Nike’s Vaporfly and then Alphafly innovations.
The benefit of the shoes – reckoned to be as much as four minutes over a marathon among elite runners and even more for recreational runners – has long been widely accepted and Nike athletes briefly dominated the marathon, with their athletes taking 31 of the 36 podium places in the six majors of 2019.