{"id":14409,"date":"2026-05-01T19:40:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T18:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=14409"},"modified":"2026-05-01T19:40:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T18:40:38","slug":"london-marathon-sabastian-sawe-record-will-not-mean-athletics-strangle-innovation-says-lord-coe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=14409","title":{"rendered":"London Marathon: Sabastian Sawe record will not mean athletics &#8216;strangle innovation&#8217;, says Lord Coe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">World Athletics president Sebastian Coe says the organisation will not &#8220;strangle innovation&#8221;, following the debate around the so-called &#8216;super shoe&#8217; which helped Sabastian Sawe become the first person to run a competitive marathon in under two hours.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 31-year-old Kenyan won Sunday&#8217;s London Marathon in one hour 59 minutes 30 seconds, writing himself into history and breaking a barrier once thought by many to be impossible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I don&#8217;t think any society, any civilisation, any sector of the economy has been served well if you try to strangle innovation,&#8221; Coe told BBC Sport Africa on a visit to Botswana before the World Relays.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The role of World Athletics is very clear &#8211; we want to enable, but we also have a regulatory responsibility.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sawe, Ethiopia&#8217;s Yomif Kejelcha &#8211; who also ran under two hours as he finished 10 seconds behind Sawe &#8211; and Tigst Assefa, who set a new world record time as the winner of the women&#8217;s race, all wore the Adidas Adios Pro 3 shoes in London.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sawe thanked Adidas for making what he said were the best shoes he had worn, particularly highlighting how &#8220;very light&#8221; and stable they are.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The first super shoe to weigh under 100 grams, Adidas claim their technology improves running economy by 1.6%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But any runner wanting to benefit will have to pay about $500 (\u00a3450) to road test the product themselves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Yes, shoes play a part, but not the biggest part,&#8221; Coe said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The biggest part is the mentality of the athlete, the physicality of the athlete, the world-class coaching, the world-class programmes that are now being run through federations to support their athletes. That&#8217;s all a part of the improved performances.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sawe shaved more than two minutes off his personal best in London, attributing his improvement to running about 200km a week at altitude.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His progress was also aided by developments in fuelling. The Kenyan reportedly took on 115g of carbohydrates per hour during the race, following a breakfast consisting only of two slices of bread with honey and tea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>World Athletics president Sebastian Coe says the organisation will not &#8220;strangle innovation&#8221;, following the debate around the so-called &#8216;super shoe&#8217; which helped Sabastian Sawe become the first person to run a competitive marathon in under two hours. The 31-year-old Kenyan won Sunday&#8217;s London Marathon in one hour 59 minutes 30 seconds, writing himself into history<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}