Clayton Young is leaving ASICS. And if you were hoping for more details than that, well — you’ll have to wait like the rest of us.
The elite American long-distance runner announced on Instagram Tuesday that his seven-year partnership with ASICS has come to an end, and that a new deal is already locked in. He’s just not ready to say who with. “More to come soon. Stay tuned,” he wrote, which is the running equivalent of leaving a party and texting your friends “I’ll explain later.”
The post itself was a career photo dump — Gate River, Twin Cities, the 2020 Olympic Trials — with a caption that managed to say quite a lot while revealing almost nothing. Very on-brand for Young, who has built a reputation as one of the more thoughtful and open communicators in professional running, right up until the moment he decided not to be.
Seven Years Is a Long Time in Running Shoes
Young signed with ASICS back in 2018, when the brand was pushing hard to build out its elite running roster. Over those seven years, he wore the stripe through road races, track, and cross-country — logging more miles in their kit than most of us will run in a lifetime.
He didn’t explain why it ended, and ASICS hasn’t said anything publicly either. What he did say was that it wasn’t easy.
“This decision has by no means been easy, but I’m confident it is the right one. And more than anything, I am excited about this next chapter,” he wrote.
That’s the language of someone who made a hard call and is at peace with it — not someone who got shown the door.
He Treated This Like a Race
If you follow Young at all, you know the man does not wing things. He is, by his own description, “obsessively methodical and intentional” in how he approaches training and racing. Apparently that extends to contract negotiations too.
He was careful to frame the sponsor decision in the same terms he’d use to describe a marathon build: deliberate, data-driven, long-term. The new deal is expected to run for more than four years — a stretch he called “arguably the most important years of my running career.”
That’s not throwaway language. Young is 30. The window for an elite marathoner to peak is real, and it’s not infinite. Whoever just signed him knows they’re getting him at full tilt.
So Who Is It?
Nobody knows yet, and that’s clearly intentional. The timing — early in the 2026 season, ahead of the spring majors — suggests a formal reveal isn’t far off. Brands don’t sign elite athletes and sit on the announcement for long. Expect a campaign, a race debut in new kit, or both, probably within weeks.
In the meantime, the running internet is doing what it does best: speculating loudly with incomplete information. Nike? New Balance? On? Adidas? Everyone has a theory.
Young isn’t giving anything away. He closed his post with two words: “Stay tuned.”
Infuriating. Effective. Very Clayton Young.
