Abby Steiner is taking legal action against Puma, alleging that the footwear provided to her as part of her professional sponsorship deal is responsible for the injuries that derailed her track career. According to BroBible, the former collegiate standout filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts last week, pointing the finger directly at the design choices of the athletic gear she was required to wear while chasing a spot in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
It is a massive claim that highlights just how critical the relationship is between a professional runner and their equipment. Steiner is no stranger to high-level competition, having built a reputation for excellence during her time at the University of Kentucky. She arrived in Lexington in 2018 as a dual-sport athlete, splitting her time between soccer and track. She eventually decided to walk away from soccer after her freshman season to focus entirely on the track, a move that clearly paid off in terms of performance.
By 2021, she had captured the 200m title at the NCAA Division I Indoor Championships. She followed that up by defending her title the next year and winning the outdoor championships as well, all while setting a college record that still stands with a blistering time of 21.80 seconds. She rounded out her stellar collegiate career as a four-time national champion, including a win with the Kentucky 4x400m relay team.
The gear she wore is now the biggest question
Her transition to the professional ranks came with a lucrative sponsorship deal from Puma, an arrangement that was supposed to be the catalyst for her Olympic aspirations. Unfortunately, the path to Paris was blocked by a series of significant foot injuries that required multiple surgeries on both feet within a single year. By 2025, Steiner had announced she was “taking a step back from running” to pursue a master’s degree at the University of South Carolina.
The lawsuit suggests that her departure from the sport was not just bad luck, but a direct result of the gear she was supplied. The core of the complaint centers on specific footwear models that Puma developed in collaboration with engineers from the Mercedes Formula 1 team. Steiner alleges that the inclusion of carbon fiber plates and proprietary “nitrofoam technology” in these shoes created a dangerous environment for her feet.
The lawsuit explicitly names the Deviate Nitro Elite 2 and 3, along with the evoSpeed Tokyo Nitro and the evoSPEED Tokyo Nitro 400M, as the culprits. She claims these shoes were “unsafe, unreasonably dangerous, defective, and capable of causing injury and harm” while also asserting that they “altered the biomechanics of runners” by increasing the stress and strain on the foot.
It is worth noting that modern running technology is a massive industry where companies spend vast sums of money to shave fractions of a second off race times. We have seen the impact of this engineering firsthand, such as on April 26th, when Sabastian Sawe became the first person to run an official marathon in under two hours, finishing in London with a time of 1:59:30.
That performance was largely attributed to his Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3s, which weigh a mere 97 grams and are designed to maximize energy return. While these shoes can retail for $500, their value on the resale market has skyrocketed to thousands of dollars. The situation illustrates that shoes are arguably the most essential piece of equipment for a runner, acting as the bridge between their physical capability and the track.
When that bridge collapses, a random moment can end your career and leave even the most elite athletes searching for a new path. Steiner’s background as an athlete who grew up in Dublin, Ohio, shows she was always someone who understood the importance of specialized training. Even as a high schooler, she balanced soccer and track, setting four state records and winning 14 individual state championships despite overcoming a torn ACL.
She previously credited her success at the University of Kentucky to the ability to fully commit to the periodization of training once she stopped playing soccer, noting in 2022 that “allowing myself to dive fully into the process of the periodization of training that we do, so fall training and then going into indoor and outdoor, it’s all really important in developing speed and getting to where you want to be.”
As of this writing, neither Puma nor Mercedes has issued a response to the lawsuit. Both entities have until August 24th to officially address the claims in court.
Published: Apr 30, 2026 04:00 pm