Gelindo Bordin won the Olympic marathon in Seoul in 1988, won Boston in 1990, and is still the only man to hold both titles simultaneously. He discovered running at age 12 when a teacher made his class run two laps of a soccer field in the rain with no sports gear, and he lapped everyone twice. He turned professional at 24 after working as a home designer in Verona, survived a car accident, a mystery virus, a double injury in his knee, and a torn meniscus at the Barcelona Olympics. Then he went to work for Diadora.
That backstory matters because it shapes how he talks. This is not an executive who came up through marketing. It is someone who ran his body hard for the better part of two decades and now works inside a brand trying to protect other runners from the mistakes the industry keeps making.
We talked about what carbon plates actually do (and why influencers are demonstrating them wrong), why foam compounds need to match the runner and not just the shoe, and what the brands still standing in specialty retail have in common.
🎧 Listen here: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
This Episode Covers
What a carbon plate actually does, and why flexing a shoe to show it “springs back” is backwards
Why most brands use two foam compounds and why Diadora uses five
The transition risk nobody talks about when switching shoe types
Why Diadora sells only through specialty retail in the US, and why that costs them money on purpose
How a family-owned brand makes product decisions on a three-to-five year horizon instead of a quarterly one
What Gelindo looks for at marathon expos when he wants real consumer feedback
The Carbon Plate Problem Nobody Is Explaining
Almost no one in the market understands what a carbon plate actually does. That includes many of the people reviewing and selling the shoes.
When influencers demonstrate a carbon plate shoe by flexing it and watching it spring back, they are showing a shoe performing incorrectly. The carbon plate’s job is to make the shoe stiff. That stiffness creates a longer lever at takeoff, transferring energy more efficiently through the ankle and calf. A carbon plate shoe that bends easily is not working as designed.
Gelindo put it plainly: the wrong message is going out to consumers every week, and it is coming from people with large audiences who have not been told what they are actually looking at.
Beyond the mechanics, there is a training load problem. Recreational runners are wearing their fastest shoes every day and wondering why injury rates are climbing. The shoe that helps you run your fastest race cannot also be your daily trainer.
“The carbon plate needs to make the shoes stiff in order to make the longer lever when you’re taking off. You have much more energy to transfer from the takeoff moment to the ankle and the calf muscle. That’s the secret of the carbon plate. And if it flexes very much, it doesn’t work.”
Five Compounds Where Most Brands Use Two
Diadora builds five foam compounds across their line. Most brands work with two.
The reasoning comes down to physics: foam compounds have an optimal energy return frequency, and that frequency has to match the speed of the runner using it. A compound tuned for a sub-2:10 marathoner is returning energy too fast to be useful for someone running five-hour pace. The technology is not broken. It is mismatched.
A runner finishing a marathon in five hours needs a fundamentally different shoe than one finishing in two. Not a cushier version of the same thing. A different compound, tuned to a different frequency of ground contact.
This approach costs more to develop and is harder to explain at retail. But it is the operational expression of a stated mission at Diadora: treat every consumer like a top runner, which means building specifically for their actual needs rather than scaling down from elite.
Where Injury Actually Lives
Bordin makes the same point about training and brand strategy in nearly the same breath: the most important variable is showing up long enough for adaptation to happen.
For runners, that means building a base without getting injured. For brands, it means not pivoting product philosophy every season.
The parallel is not just motivational. When a runner switches from a high-drop shoe to a low-drop shoe too quickly, different muscle groups activate, transition stress spikes, and injury risk goes up. The body needs weeks to adapt. The same logic applies when a brand changes direction: consumers who trusted the product have to relearn what the brand stands for, and that trust does not rebuild quickly.
The brands still in the top tier of specialty running stayed focused. The ones that chased lifestyle or pivoted to trail or tried to be everything to everyone lost time they are still trying to make up.
Specialty Retail Is a Distribution Philosophy, Not Just a Channel
Diadora sells exclusively through specialty running retail in the US. It costs them online revenue. Bordin does not apologize for it.
You can build the best shoe in the world, but if it ends up on the wrong foot, it fails. The only way to reliably get the right product to the right consumer is to put knowledgeable humans in the middle of that transaction. Specialty retailers watch the customer move, ask the right questions, and make recommendations that an e-commerce algorithm cannot replicate.
Every well-suggested shoe is a win for the brand. Every poor fit is a loss; not just of that customer, but of the word-of-mouth and trust that specialty retail is built on.
“Don’t do it through the website. There’s no human touch. A product like running shoes cannot be treated through a website, especially in the innovation area. You need to go inside the shop.”
What Being Family-Owned Actually Changes
Diadora is still family-owned. The owner is patient.
That patience means product decisions can be made on a three-to-five year horizon instead of a quarterly one. It means the brand can hold its specialty retail focus even when online would be faster money. It means R&D investments in injury research get funded without needing an immediate return.
The contrast with investor-backed brands is not subtle. Investor timelines push for growth that outpaces category knowledge. Family-owned brands can wait for the market to catch up to their positioning. Neither model is universally better, but the ownership structure has downstream effects on every product, marketing, and distribution decision the company makes.
The Signal That Actually Matters
On filtering consumer feedback from noise, Bordin does not point to social listening tools or NPS scores. He goes to marathon expos and watches people try shoes on, in person, in real time.
The feedback at the moment of fit is unfiltered. People’s faces tell you whether the shoe is working. Retailer feedback is useful but comes with its own bias; influenced by what is selling elsewhere, by the last brand rep who came through, by their own preferences. The final consumer, trying the shoe for the first time without context, is the clearest data point available.
It is a low-tech answer from someone who works at a brand with an on-site innovation lab and multiple R&D partnerships. But it is consistent with the larger theme throughout this conversation: the fundamentals matter more than the sophistication.
Five Takeaways
Carbon plates are a racing tool, not a daily trainer. The stiffness that makes carbon plates effective for racing also alters load mechanics in ways that accumulate over daily training. The market is not communicating this clearly enough.
Compound matching is the hidden variable in shoe performance. A foam compound tuned for elite pace returns energy too fast for a recreational runner. Brands building five compounds instead of two are making a real product decision; not a marketing one.
Transition speed is where injury actually lives. Whether changing drop, cushion height, or shoe type, the risk is in the speed of the change, not the change itself. Bodies adapt, but adaptation takes weeks. Abrupt switches override the process.
Brand consistency compounds the same way training does. The brands that have lasted in specialty running all share one trait: they did not pivot when the market got noisy. Short-term returns often came at the cost of positioning they are still trying to rebuild.
The clearest consumer signal comes from watching someone try the shoe. Surveys, reviews, and social feedback carry noise. The real data is the facial reaction at first wear.
🎧 Listen here: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Links and Credits
Check out Diadora
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Episode credits:
Host: Jon Levitt
Guest: Gelindo Bordin, Director at Diadora
Production: Dylan Delaney of Delaney Video
Management: Angie Lake
Jon Levitt is the founder of Long Run Labs, an endurance and outdoor podcast network, and the host of For The Long Run. This newsletter covers the business of creator partnerships, sponsorship strategy, and what the data actually shows, in addition to a weekly article from that week’s Long Run Labs Podcast.
Great insights. Subscribed to the pod (how was I not already??).