They say shoes maketh the man. But did a pair of trainers make Ethiopia’s Tigist Assefa a record-breaking runner? Her shattering of the women’s marathon world record by more than two minutes – while wearing a pair of Adidas’s new Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1s – has reignited the debate about the role of “super shoes” in athletic performance.
Assefa has credited her performance to “hard work over the past year”. However, speaking before the event, she also described her Adizeros as “the lightest racing shoe I have ever worn”, and said: “The feeling of running in them is an incredible experience – like nothing I’ve felt before.”
