NCAA track & field star Abby Steiner has filed a $1.2 million lawsuit against Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd. and Puma. This comes amid Steiner’s complaint about the defective shoes produced by PUMA and the Formula 1 team’s failure to address the product’s risks, which ultimately shattered her longevity on the tracks.
Steiner has made a name for herself on track, where she holds the U.S. indoor record of 200m and 300m and also boasts personal bests of 10.90 seconds over 100m and 21.77 seconds over 200m. The NCAA icon from Dublin has, however, seen her meteoric rise crash when she started wearing a list of newly-produced nitrofoam technology-built shoes from 2022, which started impacting her training and ultimately her performance on the tracks.
Steiner has filed a liability lawsuit claiming that the shoe designs, as well as the carbon fiber plate, changed the mechanics of the foot during runs, which led to small injuries over the course. She claimed to have worn most of the latest shoes of the time, which include the Deviate Nitro Elite 2 and 3, evoSpeed Tokyo Nitro, and evoSpeed Tokyo Nitro 400M, all of which include the carbon fiber plate or Nitro Foam tech.
In the lawsuit filed at the Middlesex County Superior Court in Massachusetts, Steiner claims that the shoes failed to help her foot absorb the ground strikes and instead shifted all the intensity to her body, which caused great stress during runs. She mentioned how PUMA and Mercedes knew the flawed mechanism of the shoes, which had severe chances of causing bone stress.
While Mercedes is not directly involved in the track, Steiner claims that their engineering blueprints are all over the shoe designs. The F1 team has prioritized stiffness over foot safety, basically treating foot runners as race cars.
PUMA started their marketing partnership with Steiner back in 2022; however, Steiner alleges that by 2025, her frequent injuries led to multiple surgeries, solely due to blind faith in the tech promised by the makers as something beyond innovative with supreme cushioning. Steiner’s Olympic training, as she mentioned, came to a severe physical halt, and she had to grind through the rest with sheer willpower.
The main highlight of the lawsuit hits on informed consent, which basically translates to the defendants failing to warn their customers of the potential downsides that can occur when getting in contact with such high-end tech. She claims that the makers knew about the downsides being lethal enough to cause career-ending injuries even before showing its competitive edge.
Steiner’s lawsuit has a few counts that the defendants would need to tackle, with the primary focus on not informing the consumers of the products’ liabilities, followed by design defects, and ultimately pushing this product into the market, despite being privy to the safety hazards.
As for Steiner personally, she has currently moved off track and is pursuing her master’s in exercise science at the University of South Carolina.
When Abby Steiner Got Emotional Talking About her 2024 Olympic Miss Due to a foot injury
Since 2021, Abby Steiner has established herself as the most decorated college track star in modern history, and despite the early success, her battles with injuries have taken a severe toll on her championship goals.
During the 2024 Olympic trials, Steiner failed to make it to the Olympic 200m team, finishing sixth, which halted her chances to represent her country. During an interview, she emotionally spoke about the impact.
“Obviously very disappointing, like I said no one comes here wanting to do anything other that wanting to represent their country in the olympics so, so we put our heart and soul into this sport, so yeah, it doesn’t feel good,” she said (2:53).
Through her social media, Steiner remains active with her fans, while hinting at possible event appearances alongside providing updates on what the future holds for her on the tracks.
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