Winner of Vienna Marathon Disqualified due to illegal shoes

Now for an unusual story. Last weekend, the Vienna City Marathon was held with 6000 runners registered for the event. The first runner across the line was Derara Hurisa from Ethiopia with a time of 2 hour 9 minutes and 22 seconds.

Not long after finishing however, he was disqualified for wearing 'illegal shoes' that had soles that were 1cm thicker than the legal 4cm limit.

The oganisers wrote... “Winner disqualified: The initial winner of the Vienna City Marathon had to be disqualified for wearing shoes which are not compliant with the rules. Ethiopia’s Derara Hurisa crossed the finish line first after 2.09:22,”

“The sole of road running shoes has to be no thicker than four centimetres. Hurisa was running with a model that has a sole thickness of five centimetres.”

“Kenya’s Leonard Langat is now the winner of the Vienna City Marathon with a time of 2.09:25,”

The illegal shoes in question were the Adidas Prime X.

Nike were the first company to market special shoes with carbon fibre plate in their sole to help the athlete spring forward. Other companies soon came up with their own designs.

At the start of 2020, World Athletics, the governing body for track and field imposed a ban on any shoes with a sole thicker than 40 millimetres (4cms) or shoes that contain more than one plate.

With regards to the disqualification in the Vienna Marathon, the organisers said that every runner or their manager had to fill in a form in which they have to name the model of the shoe they were going to wear. On Hurisa’s form a shoe was named that was within the rules. 

“We also stressed in the technical meeting the rules about the shoes. Unfortunately we had no other choice than disqualifying the athlete. It is the first time something like this has happened. And I am pretty sure that from now on there will be some form of checks to avoid something like this to happen again in a major race.“

For some reason on race day, he wore the Adidas Prime X shoes which he had used in training and thought they were within the rules.