Three Shoes, One Name, One World Record
Yomif Kejelcha kissed a shoe reading Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 in Buenos Aires. Two more shoes on the World Athletics list answer to the same name, and neither has ever been sold.
The shoe he held up at the finish in Buenos Aires said Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3. Clean, legible, on the World Athletics approved list. Case closed, except it isn't. There are three shoes on that list carrying the name Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, and two of them are development shoes that have never been offered for sale to anyone.
56:51. A world record, set in a shoe whose name belongs to three different objects.
The rules do not care which one was on his feet. Marathon Handbook's reading is that the 56:51 would stand in any of the three. That is the part worth sitting with. The most regulated object in the sport, the one thing officials actually measure and certify, turns out to have a name that points at a shelf rather than a shoe.
Somewhere in Herzogenaurach there are two pairs no shop will ever stock, wearing the same three words as the pair you can buy. That is not a scandal. That is a flex.