Shares in Adidas climbed sharply on the Frankfurt exchange on Monday morning, the first trading session after Sabastian Sawe ran 1:59:30 at the TCS London Marathon — the first sub-two-hour clocking in a record-eligible marathon and the first men's world record set in an Adidas shoe since Kelvin Kiptum's 2:00:35 at Chicago in 2023. The German sportswear brand opened up 4.7% at 232.10, peaking just under 6% before settling for a 5.1% closing gain that added an estimated 2.1 billion euros to its market capitalisation in a single day.
The product at the centre of Monday's rally is the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, a 97-gram racing shoe launched only ten days before London at a recommended retail price of 500 dollars. All three men inside Kelvin Kiptum's deposed world record at London — Sawe, Yomif Kejelcha (1:59:41) and Jacob Kiplimo (2:00:28) — wore the Evo 3, while Tigst Assefa wore the women's prototype version when she set a 2:15:41 women's-only world record. CNN Business reported on Monday afternoon that pre-orders for the Evo 3 had cleared the brand's North American allocation by lunchtime, with Adidas confirming a "limited initial release" of fewer than 4,000 pairs globally.
Analysts at Bernstein and RBC Capital Markets both raised their twelve-month price targets in notes circulated before the European close, citing what RBC's Piral Dadhania called "the most valuable single hour of marketing in running shoe history". Bernstein's research note pointed out that Adidas had been losing market share in performance running through 2025, partly to On Running and partly to Nike's resurgent Alphafly franchise, and argued that the London result resets the competitive narrative ahead of the autumn World Marathon Majors in Berlin, Chicago and New York. Adidas has not yet confirmed a wider Evo 3 release window beyond a vague second-half 2026 target.
The reaction stands in pointed contrast to Nike, whose own Alphafly 4 was worn by Joshua Cheptegei in his disappointing London debut and by several runners outside the top fifteen. Nike issued a brief statement acknowledging "an extraordinary day for marathon running" without naming any competitor product, and the company's stock closed the day flat on the New York Stock Exchange. Industry observers noted that Nike still claimed the most podium finishes across the elite men's and women's fields combined at London, but that the optics of an Adidas-clad athlete becoming the first man under two hours legally are likely to dominate the spring buying season.
Beyond the shoe itself, Adidas executives are expected to face questions about supply, scarcity and price at the company's Q1 trading update on 6 May. The Evo 3 sits at the most expensive end of the racing shoe market, and the brand's earlier Evo 1 attracted criticism for its limited availability and roughly 200-mile usable lifespan. Whether Monday's rally is sustained will depend less on Sawe's run and more on how cleanly Adidas can convert a viral moment into volume in the home-gym, comeback-marathon spring of 2026 — a period in which Strava reported a 22% year-on-year surge in marathon training plan downloads in the seven days before the London race.