For sportswear makers, producing the world’s first sub-2-hour marathon is becoming the ultimate arms race.
Nike Inc. this week said it would stage an attempt to break the 2-hour barrier in the spring. Its chief rival Adidas AG has also been working on a similar effort, according to people familiar with the matter. The Adidas project is at least two years in development and has already yielded a prototype of a running shoe, one of the people said.
Nike said it is developing new footwear for its project and has enlisted three of its top sponsored marathoners, including the reigning Olympic champion, to commit to running a race sometime in the next few months. Nike hasn’t decided where it will stage the event but said it won’t be eligible for a world record.
The Adidas project is aimed at helping current Adidas athletes break the 2-hour barrier on an established course, one of the people said. The company sponsors the current world record holder, Dennis Kimetto of Kenya, who set the time of 2:02:57 in Berlin in 2014. It is unclear how close Adidas is to its attempt.
Adidas declined to comment. Nike said it began work on its own sub-2 marathon project in summer 2014, “although we had been working on a specific marathon footwear solution for over a year prior.â€
In recent years, Nike and Adidas have operated in an increasingly competitive market, not only for sports marketing influence but in sales of sportswear. The rise of so-called athleisure has brought more competitors into the mix and sales of casual, fashion-forward shoes have risen faster than performance-oriented sneakers.
Those conditions have put more pressure on the likes of Nike and Adidas to reignite sales of performance gear. “A pendulum swing in fashion preference from performance towards lifestyle fashion athletic footwear has contributed to a bearish sentiment on Nike,†wrote Stifel analyst Jim Duffy earlier this week.
A sub-2-hour marathon is considered something of a last frontier in running, since the four-minute mile was shattered decades ago. The topic is often debated but experts are skeptical that the barrier will be broken in the near term.
Nike said “the only real failure would be to not attempt it.†The company said it is developing a full product line, including footwear and apparel, for its event, details of which will be released at a later date.
Running experts say it is unclear what enhancements either Nike or Adidas can provide to help elite athletes shave nearly 3 minutes off the world’s record. According to the competition rule book by the International Association of Athletics Federations, the governing body of track and field, shoes worn in competition “must not be constructed so as to give an athlete any unfair additional assistance, including by the incorporation of any technology which will give the wearer any unfair advantage.â€
