All Six Berlin Marathon Podium Finishers Wore the Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3

All six runners on the Berlin Marathon podium on Sunday raced in the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, the $500 shoe the German brand released in April, at a race Adidas also sponsors. Guye Adola won the men’s race in a personal best of 2:02:50, with Gemechu Dida second in 2:03:19 and Gabriel Geay third in 2:03:59. Tigst Assefa won the women’s race in a course record of 2:11:04, the third-fastest time a woman has ever run for the distance, and Bedatu Hirpa and Dera Dida came in more than five minutes later, in 2:16:53 and 2:16:55.

Assefa’s pair was a development version of the Evo 3 rather than the shoe Adidas sells. World Athletics’ list of approved shoes carries two of them, entered as EVO 3 DEV and EVO 3 DEV1, and Adidas has not said which one she wore. Her 2:11:53 world record here in 2023 also came in a shoe most runners could not buy, a variant of the first Adios Pro Evo, as Believe in the Run noted at the time, and on Sunday she took 49 seconds off it even after slowing badly over the last 2K, where she appeared to be limping.

The Pro 5 Went on Sale Five Days Earlier

The Adizero Adios Pro 5, the shoe Adidas has spent the week promoting, went on sale on Sept. 22 at $275, built on much the same shape as the Evo 3 and made to last longer, which puts its average weight at 177 grams against the Evo 3’s 97. Sabastian Sawe, the world record holder and last year’s winner here, was ruled out of Berlin in August by a tibial stress fracture.

Every podium finisher still went with the lighter, pricier shoe, one that has been hard to get hold of from the start. Larger sizes of the Evo 3 were scarce by the afternoon of its release in April, and some pairs were listed on StockX for $5,500.

Five of the Year’s 10 Major Wins

Berlin brings the Evo 3 to five wins at the Majors this season. Sawe wore it for 1:59:30 in London in April, the first time anyone had broken two hours in a race that counts for records, and Assefa wore it that same day to set the women-only world record. Peres Jepchirchir then won Sydney in it.

The other five winners were spread across four brands, going by Sneaker Freaker‘s tally of the season. Tadese Takele won Tokyo in an older Adidas, the Adios Pro Evo 1, while Brigid Kosgei took the women’s race there in Nike’s Vaporfly 4. In Boston, John Korir won in an ASICS Metaspeed Sky prototype and Sharon Lokedi in Under Armour’s Velociti Elite 3, and Addisu Gobena won the men’s race in Sydney in a prototype of Nike’s Alphafly 4.

A year ago Adidas also won both races in Berlin, but it had to share the podium. Sawe won the 2025 race in the Evo 2, and Rosemary Wanjiru and Dera Dida went one-two in the Adios Pro 4, while Akira Akasaki finished second in a Nike Alphafly 3 and Azmera Gebru third in ASICS’ Metaspeed Tokyo. Dera Dida is the only runner who stood on both podiums, and she has gone from the Pro 4 to the Evo 3 in the space of 12 months. Chicago and New York City are the two Majors left this year.