A month after world champion sprinter Abby Steiner sued Puma and Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix, alleging Puma’s shoes caused career-ending injuries, two more elite sprinters have made similar allegations.
U.S. world champion Champion Allison and Jamaican Olympian Damion Thomas Jr. both filed lawsuits Tuesday, claiming that Puma’s products gave them permanent foot injuries that required surgery. Like Steiner, Thomas Jr. claims he is unable to run at a professional and Olympic level, while Champion says he can’t run at the same level that he did before getting hurt.
Peter Flowers, the attorney who represents Steiner, Allison, and Thomas Jr. told Front Office Sports that an influx of runners and coaches who wore Puma products contacted his firm about similar foot injuries after Steiner filed her lawsuit. The two male sprinters were among them.
“When I learned about Abby Steiner’s lawsuit, it was the first time I considered that what happened to me wasn’t just bad luck,” Thomas Jr. said in a Tuesday release. “Like a lot of athletes, I assumed my injury was something I had to deal with on my own. If it took a lawsuit for me to realize I wasn’t alone, there have to be thousands of other athletes out there who still don’t know,”
The Allegations
Allison represented the United States at the 2022 World Championships, where he won gold on the men’s 4×400 relay team. He is also currently the 13th-fastest performer of all time in the 400 meter dash. In 2023, he competed just once and sat out most of the track season due to an unspecified injury at the time. And though he returned to racing in 2024 and last competed in June 2025, his times in the 400 were significantly slower.
According to his Instagram bio, Allison is currently a real estate investor.
“When you sign with a major brand, you trust that the equipment they put on your feet has been tested and is safe,” Allison said. “You don’t expect that what they’re giving you might be the reason your career is falling apart and that they should have known the risks,”
Thomas Jr. raced for LSU from 2018 to 2021, where he was a national champion in the 60-meter hurdles. Shortly after his college career, he competed at the 2021 Olympics, where he finished 10th overall in the 110m hurdles semi-finals. In October 2024, he underwent surgery to remove a bone spur in his foot, which he said caused him “extreme discomfort and pain” to his achilles and lower heel. He last competed In July 2024.
Allison and Thomas Jr.’s lawsuits—filed in Massachusetts Superior Court like Steiner’s—both claim that the sprinters started wearing Puma products in 2022. They list similar allegations to Steiner’s suit, claiming that Puma’s design and use of carbon fiber plates and nitrofoam increased injury risk.
“It changes your posture, which puts more force on different parts of your feet than existed before, different forces on your Achilles tendon,” Flowers says of why Puma’s carbon plates and nitrofoam made its shoes injury-prone. “All of these things that a reasonable company would have known had they tested these shoes.”
Though the exact shoes they listed were different from each other and what Steiner wore, they mostly consisted of similar Puma evoSpeed and Deviate Nitro products.
Puma and Merecdes F1 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In April, Puma told FOS following Steiner’s lawsuit that it denied any allegations that its products cause injuries, and that “We consistently collaborate with our athletes to provide products that meet their needs.”
In response to Puma’s comment, Flowers said that the company did not address whether they informed athletes of the safety risks that came with their products—which his athletes’ lawsuits allege failed to happen.
“That sounds to me like that’s all about sales,” Flowers said. “There was nothing in that comment to me that showed anything to do with safety.”
Just like Steiner, Allison and Thomas Jr. seek financial and nonfinancial compensation from Puma, making up for medical expenses, loss of career earnings, and a loss of “full enjoyment of life and disfigurement.” Flowers also hopes that his lawsuit can bring more transparency to safety risks in the shoe industry.
How Things Unfolded
Steiner, Allison, and Thomas Jr. all claim that they only discovered recently that Puma products were the culprit for their injuries. While Allison and Thomas Jr. came forward after seeing Steiner’s case, Flowers says that Steiner deduced the connection between injury and shoe product herself, but wouldn’t go into further detail.
“When she suffered her injuries and she went and got care—Abby’s an extremely intelligent person—[she] then started to question, where could this possibly be coming from?” Flowers said. “From there, [she] sought lawyers and etcetera.”
And while the sprinters’ lawsuits center around Puma, Flowers thinks these injuries are bigger than Puma, carbon plates, or nitrofoam. He cites a former collegiate runner’s ongoing lawsuit against Nike as another example, but claims that the bigger issue is about companies “wanting to sell more than they want to do” and ignoring safety in the process.
Flowers told FOS he expects Puma to deny the allegations and begin litigation. The case docket says that an answer to Steiner’s complaint is due August 24.
