FRANKFURT Adidas AG has suspended its contract with Tyson Gay after the former double world sprint champion failed an out-of-competition dope test, the German sportswear company said on Monday. 
 
 "We are shocked by these recent allegations, and even if we presume his innocence until proven otherwise, our contract with Tyson is currently suspended," an Adidas spokesman said. 
 
 Adidas' agreements with athletes give it the right to terminate the contract "if the athlete is found guilty of the possession or use of drugs or any other prohibited substance by the relevant governing sports body having jurisdiction over the athlete." 
 
 Gay, who has been on Adidas' books since 2005, had said on Sunday he had tested positive for a substance he could not identify and that he was pulling out of next month's world championships in Moscow. 
 
 "I don't have a sabotage story. I don't have lies ... I basically put my trust in someone and I was let down," the American said, adding that he had never knowingly taken a performance-enhancing drug. 
 
 Also on Sunday, former world 100 meters record holder Asafa Powell and Olympic 4x100 meters relay silver medalist Sherone Simpson said they had both tested positive for the stimulant oxilophrine at last month's Jamaican championships. 
 
 Powell and Simpson, both from Jamaica, have denied knowingly taking a banned substance. 
 
 The doping cases are a blow to the image of athletics a month ahead of the world championships in Moscow. The sport often struggles to maintain a high profile outside Olympic years. 
 
 German company Puma SE, which sponsors Jamaican athletics through a contract with the national association there, declined to comment because it does not have individual contracts with any of the athletes involved. 
 
 Puma does sponsor Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt, whose manager said he was not involved in the latest doping scandal. 
 
 Chinese sporting goods company Li Ning, which sponsors Powell, was not immediately available for comment. 
 
 (Reporting by Joern Poltz; Additional reporting by Keith Weir in London; Writing by Victoria Bryan; Editing by David Holmes) ||||| Too often, when a sportswear brand has released a women’s sneaker, it’s been a retrofit of something originally designed for men. “Shrink it and pink it” is the industry term. 
 
 But some companies are finally starting to recognize that women represent a huge missed opportunity for sales. In the US, the world’s largest sportswear market, for instance, women outnumber men among those finishing races, and have since at least 2010, according to Running USA. 
 
 This year, Adidas aims to capitalize on the female runner. On Feb. 1, the company launches a new running sneaker designed purely for women, the PureBoost X. It’s the culmination, Adidas says, of three years of research on women’s feet. ”This is going to be a big year for Adidas and women’s,” Kelly Olmstead, Adidas’s senior director of marketing, tells Quartz. “But this really is the crown jewel in our efforts to connect in the first half of the year.” 
 
 So how is it different? In the middle of the shoe, where the arch of the foot is, the upper is completely detached from Adidas’s popular Boost sole. The reasoning, according to Mikal Peveto, Adidas’ design director for running, is to make the sneaker as flexible as a woman’s foot. 
 
 Adidas You can put your finger all the way through that hole in the arch. 
 
 To look at exactly what’s going on during running, the company used Aramis, a motion tracking technology used to analyze stress on the wings of planes. A runner’s foot will expand up to a centimeter as it hits the ground and comes up again, and Peveto says that movement tends to be more pronounced in women’s feet. 
 
 “The tendons and ligaments are actually more flexible themselves,” he tells Quartz. “The arch, because it’s more flexible, will have more movement. That inspired this idea.” 
 
 Adidas believes the design makes for a shoe that’s incredibly comfortable, which is important in a running shoe, if not actually more supportive. Peveto says the support happens on a “proprioceptive level,” meaning it’s perceived, almost like a placebo. The $120 shoe wraps snugly around your arch, making it feel supported. 
 
 Some customers may feel shortchanged that there isn’t more actual structural support. Adidas, however, says in its numerous conversations with female athletes, the support they wanted was an arch that feels good, and that’s what it delivered. 
 
 Another top priority for women was sneakers that look great, and make their feet appear slim and not too long. Two weeks after the PureBoost X launches, Adidas will also release a $170 model created with fashion designer Stella McCartney. 
 
 Adidas The Stella McCartney-designed PureBoosts are the ones on the outsides. 
 
 While brands from Lululemon to Gap battle to sell women workout gear, running sneakers may offer a particularly good opportunity for growth. In 2015, brands sold $1.7 billion in the women’s running shoes, compared to $2.2 billion for men, according to research firm NPD Group. The men’s running market also grew more—4%, versus 2% for women’s. Yet as the race numbers show, women appear to run more. There’s no reason sales of women’s running sneakers shouldn’t be higher. 
 
 Nike has realized as much. It’s ramped up efforts to target women, and is even launching an eight-part original series to do so. 
 
 Adidas kicked off its campaign for women at the end of last year, and Olmstead says female athletes will be the face of its brand campaign in the first half of this year. The PureBoost design should eventually make its way into other Adidas products, but for now, the company has no plans to work it into men’s sneakers. It’s women’s only.
– Between 2002 and 2013, Adidas saw its overall market share more than quadruple—but in the US, the German company has recently struggled, with a retail market share of just 7% last year. And in the world of sneakers, that's a big problem: "The US is 40% of the world's sneaker market and 100% of the world’s sneaker culture," an analyst tells the Wall Street Journal. The No. 2 sports brand in the world is now trying to get off the sidelines in the US, where, in the 1970s, it was the star player. It was recently surpassed in the US by Under Armour; neither firm has caught up to Nike, which surpassed Adidas years ago, the Journal reported in January. The new effort is largely in the hands of Mark King, the president of North American operations since June. When it comes to sportswear, coolness is key, the Journal notes, and that means nabbing celebrity support. King has received the OK from Germany to sponsor as many as 500 pro football and baseball players in the US over the next few years, and he's also signed deals with Arizona State University and the University of Miami. Meanwhile, Adidas has been working with a celebrity who's not from the sports world: one Kanye West, whose Yeezy Boost shoes sold out in their first run. They're far from his only Adidas product, as his NSFW lookbook demonstrates, MTV News reports. And in a first, US product branding will be created mostly in the US, King notes, and that could be a big help: "If your upper management is in Germany, and they don't know Flatbush from Harlem from Virginia," says a retailer, "it's hard to have that information percolate back up to the top." (As for Nike, its famous slogan has a somewhat disturbing origin.)