adidas Archives Special Tour! Evolution of the Marathon Shoe from Zapotek to Today & Track Spikes

In the video, Udo Muller digs deep into the historic archives for a rare view of historic shoes demonstrating the evolution of the marathon racer from Zaoptek, Haile, and now the Pro EVO 1. He also shows us Wilma Rudolph, Edwin Moses, and Jackie Joyner Kersee’s medal winning spikes and ends with Adi’s key re invention of the soccer boot in 1954. You won’t believe what came before!

hello everybody s from Road trail run something unusual today I had the pleasure and honor of visiting Adidas headquarters this week and part of my visit there included a tour in Adidas’s 75th anniversary year of their historic archives of running soccer apparel and track and field where Udo Mueller showed me starting the very original Adidas track spike uh before the brand was even named the ADI goler Spike so udo’s going to give us a grand tour stay tuned we’re with Udo in the archives Udo tell us who you are and what are we going to see here today hello yeah my name is Udo and I joined the company already in 1992 and it was a great pleasure when the history management team basically I shouldn’t say maybe adopted me 5 years ago after a terrible tumor disease I was happy because the last 5 years I could accomplish a lot of the things my history in running goes back to 1972 but this is one of my first products that I made with a running team back in the ’90s and when you see where we started and what we archive today I mean finishing probably with the best race flat of of all times that we made and and this is the most record-breaking shoe probably of all times this is a great no I shouldn’t say just not fun but even more so fulfilling process to to see at the end of my career before I basically retire in this year that Adidas has such a long and Rich history of running Udo is going to give us a quick Journey Through the marathon Racers go ahead Udo I don’t know even know what to start but I think it’s probably fair to start with one of the best distant Runners of all time with my good old friend Emil zatopek this was one of his training shoes that he used in the 50s you see already the brand the famous free Stripes to have a key identifier on his shoes very thin cushioning but a lovely um idea from our founder Adidas to have more stability under the heel so that the shoe would not stretch and and get out of shape so Emil love these shoes as much as he did for his track races this is one of the early spikes he has worn in these years you see a very soft leather and then of course I’ll do a little jump now into the’ 70s I think his first real real running shoe was a shoe called the akill it came with a very smooth sway leather again the famous three stripes to really showcase the brand but what was more important for the runner to have really a little bit of heel cushioning it was a time when running became popular when people reached out and that was the leather version I think even more successful and funny enough today it’s a it’s one of the most popular sneakers in the market was the introduction I should take the first one was the introduction of the sl72 our first running shoe featuring a lightweight breathable nylon upper and about when it was 1972 yeah so it was launched around the the the Munich Olympics um and many many Runners loved it it was my first running shoe in those years and later ADI made slight adjustments and together with the running team they gradually upgraded the cushioning level a little bit but it stayed even though it came different colorways it stayed very much the same for a long time because it was a perfect fit it was flexible it was lightweight everything a runner wanted I think unforgotten is maybe that baby that was introduced at the late ’70s a shoe called the marathon 80 and you might remember when great vites ran and won her first New York Marathon she did this in that model um it was such a lightweight highly flexible shoe incredibly lightweight but uh the running team back then added a few nice things and for example using the the nice logo of the company which was the travel at the time even to be um a kind of traction element in the out soole and a kind of extended outso here in the back so in case you land on the heel you have a wider surface to give you grip when you land and a bit of more cushioning it was the Bas work for many many more race Flats to come in later years I mean we talked about the80s I think it’s unfair maybe only to say it was Adidas Germany working on new shoes at that time there was also a great amount of great running shoes coming out of Adidas friends Sun H was opening up already in the 60s shoe production for tennis for basketball out of France and one of their greatest Innovations was the so-called setx series that they launched in the80s so this became the the base work the ground work for what Adidas later um launched under the name of torsion so there was almost a parallel Development coming out of France and out of Germany so this was one of the shoes from France and at the same time I just picked one which was a sensation in the 80s uh Sho today sneaker freaks are getting pretty excited when they see the micro Pacer ultra thin leather rapper but there was a tiny computer embedded into the tongue of the shoe to make sure you could see how much you ran so it was the first basically a gadget to really get a little bit to know about your performances that you did in running and of course you see already with the different color zones it was a time when we all started in the running shoe industry to look a bit more into the motion of a runner and to adjust if you maybe were not born with perfect leg alignments or foot alignments um that you had a bit of yeah better motion control next to good cushion it things like that this is is a shoe that I made in in the time when I joined Adidas our team saw that there were Runners really looking for an even lighter weight um race model so when we launched the advance challenge in those years we we played around with injection Eva because it was a very well cushioned it was stable and uh I loved in that times that many many records were done on Mid on half marathon some full marathons with an ultra thin outso it became the foundation for many more shoes to come um I I grabbed one where we had a bit of not I shouldn’t say failure but a great learning material this was a shoe in the ’90s when we played around with carbon reinforcements with a carbon plate so we tried really to improve and enhance the propulsion but probably we did a little bit too much of a good thing and some some Runners returned it because they felt it’s too much and they got a little bit of a k pillers problems but it was a good good learning because if I compare that to what was the sensation now not only with teest world record last year in Berlin when she did this unbelievable sub 212 performance in in a in a mixed race now we’ve see Paris world record in London in the women only race but this is the shoe that TOA was wearing in New York last year winning in this crazy time under 205 100 30 G shoe where now it’s all in perfect harmonization the geometry the Midol Foams and the way the carbon reinforcement inside really helped to catapult our help the athlete to have an even more natural motion and really use their efficiency in the best way we can and I agree a long long time ago from I shouldn’t say failers but from learning to where we are today and like I said this is sometimes crazy when I remember my times I ran marathons in such shoes and do that maybe it’s fair to say what higher I mean I I have one shoe not put out yet no we’ll take it out because here’s the model that from all probably I love the most I was looking at hiler for over 5 years when he again tried again to be the first athlete to finish under 2 hour hours and 4 minutes and sometimes he failed for whatever reasons and on that cold Jilly morning in Berlin in 2008 he was pretty confident and when we were waiting at the Brunton Borg gate we saw the clock already on 2030 and we knew it’s minimum a minute to get to the finish line and in the end it was 2 or 359 with this unbelievable AI zero model everyone loved it it was such a record for Highland for us and I have to say when we interviewed hiler earlier this year our adzer wrote to records event here and her so he said and he did not say that with arrogance but he said it with confidence he said if I would have had a shoe like that I guess I would have been the first man in the world to to beat the two hours and now we can speculate but the way he said it and the way how these models today improve the per form of this who knows I mean I don’t want to end in speculation but between 2008 and 2024 there’s a big hell of a difference I believe thank you I prepared a few small surprises for you I think some might remember The Sensational performance of Wilma Rudolph in the 1960 Olympics in Rome this is one of her original spikes that she used in 1960 if we go to the 80s however um it’s not complete without mentioning the best hurdler Of All Times probably Edwin Moses um that left some of his great shoes and my personal favorite since I worked with her for for a couple of years Jackie joa Cy’s Spike shoe that uh she used when she did her fabulous hap Toons she was an amazing athlete and she continues to be a brand ambassador for us so what a lovely performance product we are in the archives but we’re going to talk soccer so what do we have here Udo I think I’ll take you back to the early 50s I mean you must imagine there was a time when our founder adid Dasa really made a sensation with that football or soccer boot as you call it because uh in that times I have to start with that one in that times many soccer shoes were simply looking a bit like a hiking boo they were pretty sturdy pretty heavy a bit unflexible they had for the most part leather starts so everything else but comfortable but AI didn’t like all that so what he did and uh the the German team actually wore that model was a light with truly soft leather upper low profile version and The Sensation also equipped with exchangeable plastic starts that didn’t absorb water so in total that was much lighter and more flexible than what the competitors had to wear on this excellent tournament