La Sportiva Prodigio Pro Review: The New King of the Mountain

Introduction to the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro

TAYLOR: Let’s take a quick trip back in time to the 2024 BIG Awards. It was a hot and heavy year in the trail department, as every category had bangers, but only all-timers survived the gauntlet.

The La Sportiva Prodigio won the technical category. It surprised us in many ways as it was proficient on a wide variety of terrain and distances. I even stand by my comments that this is what the Hoka Speedgoat series should have turned out to be. Simply put, it was a massive step forward for La Sportiva’s trail running offerings, as just about every aspect of the shoe showed a new approach for the mountain-centric company, and it paid off in big ways.

Under the same umbrella, La Sportiva further fleshed out the Prodigio range. It added two more shoes to the repertoire: the high-stack Prodigio Max and the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro, our topic of discussion today.

The “Pro” notation is one that we are all too familiar with. This is La Sportiva’s designated performance model, whether that means race day, hard efforts, or even daily runs. At the same time, it is designed to have a familiar taste to the original Prodigio.

Needless to say, the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro had my attention quicker than (insert something darn fast here). The construction itself is noteworthy. An innovative Power Wire upper, a new formulation of a nitro-infused TPU midsole, and their noteworthy Friction Whiten outsole seem like a fairly simple recipe that combines some of the best available ingredients.

After getting my hands on the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro a while ago, getting my butt handed to me by La Sportiva athlete Ryan Smith who was wearing them, and now getting my own miles in the shoe, I can confidently say that focusing on the basics can absolutely equate to performance.

MICHAEL: While Taylor took us back to 2024, I’m going to reach a wee bit further back to the “wow, that is actually quite distant” past. The year was 2019, and Jim Walmsley had just finished winning his second Western States 100 in a previously unimaginably fast course record time. The shoes on his feet? An all-new prototype from Hoka later to become known as the ever-famous, ubiquitously-celebrated Speedgoat EVO, an ultra-light, ultra-durable, max-cushion shoe that could race — and win — it all.

Shockingly, Hoka would only produce this beloved model for just a few years, with all its tech (and legacy) destined to be absorbed into the release of the Speedgoat 5 in 2022. For years, the EVO’s absence left the shoe nerd community in a state of heartache, as there wasn’t really anything on the market quite like it for some time. In fact, I’m still pretty sure one of our former trail reviewers, Alex, still hoards several pairs of her own for safekeeping (just don’t tell Nnormal). So, what made that shoe so great? And why am I bringing this up now 6 years later? If you would, feel free to push up the nosepiece of your nerd glasses with me and let’s go down a little (read: very, very deep) rabbit hole, shall we?

So, what’s the deal with this shoe? In the words of our reviewer Matt, the Speedgoat EVO was “Impossibly light for a shoe with so much cushioning and grippy rubber,” with a durable Matryx upper, a relatively accommodating toe box, and a soft yet responsive maximally cushioned midsole. Top it all off with a Vibram Megagrip outsole and throw in a 14:09 course record for good measure and you’ve got yourself a shoe that was head, shoulders, knees, and toes above the competition.

But then, something happened around 2020 that would change the landscape of running shoe design (and marketing) forever, and I’m not talking about COVID, whatever that was… I’m talking about the plate.

Of course, you know the story. With the release of the Nike Vaporfly, an arms race began on the roads, and it was only a matter of time before this new tech completely pervaded nearly every aspect of race-day running shoe product lines and marketing and occupied most of the free space in my otherwise college-class-filled engineering brain. For a few years, Nike always seemed to maintain a clear advantage over the rest of the competition, and they were making a killing doing so.

Every other brand followed suit in 2020, and then, with their pockets still lined from carbon’s success on the roads accompanied by an uptick in outdoor recreation enthusiasm during the pandemic, it seemed like every company rushed to release the first carbon-plated trail running shoe. This rush to the shelves resulted in some early duds like the Kailas Fuga Elite 2 and some even weirder stuff from first-time companies who seemed to just want to get their own slice of the carbon pie, like the Naked T/r.

So, in the white-hot heat of the carbon-plated craze, it’s easy to see how the EVO Speedgoat was ultimately scrubbed for its flashier sibling, the Tecton X, which proved to be a rare winner in the sea of first-time carbon. Now, since the release of these early products (some good, some terrible), we’ve tested some really, really good stuff. The North Face Summit Vectiv Pro 2 won our Best in Gear Award last year, and there are even more promising plated shoes yet to come.

Don’t get me wrong, the carbon craze is great, and in the words of Kip from Napoleon Dynamite, “Yes, I love technology,” but somewhere, deep down, runners like myself (especially those who live and race amongst very rooty, rocky, technical terrain) were wondering… does this plate thing really result in a substantial performance gain, or is what we’re experiencing here just an expensive rock plate that makes us turn our ankles more?

You see, for all intents and purposes, the EVO Speedgoat was the last true top-of-the-line non-plated trail supershoe to land at a time when the financial success of carbon hadn’t completely taken over the hearts and minds of product line managers, marketing gurus, and company shareholders. And so, for the past few years, with every carbon trail shoe I tested, there was always a voice in the back of my head wondering if I could just rip that stiff, sometimes awkward feeling from the plate right out and step into a bed of plush, responsive, unadulterated supercritical foam. (That question was answered, in fact, by only one shoe that I can think of. I didn’t get to try it, but the Saucony Endorphin Rift won our best overall trail shoe in 2023).

Now that the dust has begun to settle from the early carbon shootout, some other, lesser-known brands are beginning to ask that same question about carbon plates… like: what if we just… didn’t bother with it? For all of the issues that rigid, sometimes stride-altering plates cause, would they really be that missed if one day we just didn’t mess with them? Speedland began to answer that question with the advent of the removable plate, but in 2025, La Sportiva and Norda have bit the bullet and just done away with them altogether in their new, top-of-the-line racing platforms.

As an East Coast trail racer, to say I am excited is a wild understatement. It’s time to see what modern super foams can do on technical terrain without a stiff, sometimes sketchy plate holding them back. So, without further ado, the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro.

REESE: Alright, I’m not here to write a novel — plenty has already been said. Think of me as the quiet one in the group chat who rarely chimes in, but when something noteworthy pops up, I’ll drop a fire emoji or like a message. Consider me the tl;dr reviewer for this review.

This year has been full of “what the…” moments — some good, some not so much. When I pulled this shoe out of the box, I wasn’t sure how it would go. But the second I slipped it on, I knew this was a good “what the…” like staring at a bowl of ice cream loaded with Oreos, chocolate chip cookie dough, and drenched in a chocolate shell. There’s a lot going on, but there’s no way it’s going to be bad.

What we like about the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro

TAYLOR: In my mind, one of the major criteria for this to be a positive review is to determine whether the Prodigio Pro is at home in the mountains. If it’s a true La Sportiva shoe, it has to perform on technical terrain. Thankfully, that is absolutely the case!

The first stop on our tour-de-Prodigio-Pro is the upper. For a while it seemed like every brand was coming up with its own proprietary rubber compound, then they messed around with foams, and the most modern focal point has been the upper materials.

This is a brand new construction for La Sportiva and we haven’t seen many uppers like this. It’s similar to the Matryx material we’ve seen on shoes like the Arc’teryx Sylan Pro, the Dual Warp upper like on the North Face Vectiv Sky 2, or Bio-Dyneema upper on the Norda 005, yet not quite the same as any of them. Instead, this particular Power Wire upper is actually most similar to the Adidas Prime X Strung 2. It’s a series of engineered threads that go this way and that way in order to optimize the fit, weight, breathability, and durability. It achieves all of those goals to a high degree. However, the fit seems to stand above the rest.

Overall, the fit is snug through most of the foot. Like the original Prodigio, the forefoot is a little more generous than most other La Sportiva models but is still snug for technical performance. This Powerwire upper certainly won’t stretch out on you, so the fit you get is what you’ll likely experience for the life of the shoe. That consistency gave me confidence over all of the terrain I was able to run in this shoe. It kept my foot directly in the sweet spot, over the footbed, while maintaining a light race day feel. It reminded me of a similar confidence I had with the Norda 002, Merrell MTL Long Sky 2, Brooks Catamount 3, and Nnormal Kjerag, which are all shoes that have a lower stack and are meant for technical terrain.

This focus on technical proficiency is going to be what sets the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro apart from many others in this “race day” category. Most brands will focus on the smooth to moderate terrain to employ their best aspects. While the Prodigio Pro can certainly hang on the smoother stuff, it’s more at home and will kick some major butt as the terrain difficulty increases.

Something to note is that La Sportiva allows runners in popular sizes to be very knit-picky about their fit. It equates to about quarter-size increments instead of the typical half. So, pay attention to the European sizing in this case.

For example, I am a size US M10.5 (EU43.5 on most charts), but I went with the EU44, which is about a quarter-size up from my usual. This is my optimal La Sportiva size and it gave me a little extra length and a touch more volume but not so much to sacrifice a technically oriented fit. I would wear this size for anything from daily runs to race days of up to 4 to 6 hours before considering a full size up. If I were to go with an EU44.5 (full size up), I would get about a full thumb-width of length and even more volume.

Another highlight of the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro is the XFlow Speed midsole. It now ranks up there with a couple of my favorites and actually fits right between them in many respects. I would say that this highly reactive and well-cushioned midsole settles between the ZoomX foam found in the Nike Ultrafly and Zegama 2 and the Dream Foam in the North Face Altamesa 500. The moderately aggressive forefoot rocker allowed this foam to work its magic of having smooth and fun toe-off through each stride.

The durometer is also right between the two as it’s slightly denser than Zoom X and softer than Dream Foam. so it does feel a bit more stable as it is medium-soft. This will be another area where the Prodigio Pro will stand out as it was able to run a lot of terrain that I wouldn’t dare to in the aforementioned shoes. This combination of moderate stack height, medium soft density, and reactive midsole make for a unique combination of qualities that have been tried but never quite accomplished in trail running until now. I guess the Nnormal Tomir 2.0 somewhat fits that bill, and so does the Hoka Mafate Speed 4, but neither of those can match the all-out performance of the Prodigio Pro.

FriXion White rubber with 4 mm u-shaped lugs really rounds out this package well. It’s the icing on the cake. This rubber is very grippy and very durable — as we have come to expect with any Friction outsole by La Sportiva. What does that mean? More confidence, of course. This is one of those master-class outsole designs with a wonderful rubber formula. I love it.

As if all that wasn’t enough, a stout toe bumper is a notable aspect of this package, as many racers drop this component like a bad habit. Protection is never a bad thing if it doesn’t decrease performance, and this toe bumper will likely save many toenails.

MICHAEL: Since I wrote a novel for the intro, I’m gonna try to keep things brief here. Taylor already mentioned so much about what makes this shoe my favorite shoe I’ve ever worn, so I’ll just go into some specifics of why I like it so much, especially for the terrain I live in.

Starting from the ground up, there’s the sticky, no-nonsense FriXion White outsole with a superb 4 mm lug pattern. Since La Sportiva is known for its climbing footwear, I expected some pretty great tack, and I wasn’t left disappointed.

Moving upward, the real star of the Prodigio Pro is the midsole. Here, a mix of nitrogen-infused EVA and TPU blend together to create a midsole foam that’s one of the best I’ve ever tested. It’s light and soft without lacking responsiveness and oh-so-comfortable, perfect for technical trails. Of course, the best midsole compound in the world is nothing if it’s not formed into a nice shape, and I think this is where the genius of the Prodigio Pro really shines. While it’s not necessarily a sexy feature on paper, the omission of the Strobel board allows your foot to sit directly on top of the midsole foam.

Remarkably, this subtle design choice results in a luxurious step-in feel that’s created without the need for a mountain of (potentially unstable) midsole stack underfoot. Couple this feeling with a generously wide footprint in the forefoot and heel, and the resulting feel on the run is absolutely sensational. You get all the cushion, responsiveness, and speed of a high-stack, supercritical midsole with almost none of the instability.

Lastly, let’s not forget about the upper, which is just absolutely dialed. Taylor already spoke about how great the fit is for this shoe. The secure, precise fit is confidence-inspiring over technical trails and gave me no hesitation whatsoever to throw down the hammer on the most technical (yet runnable) descents I could find. Like the omission of the Strobel board in the midsole that I mentioned above, there are a few more genius design moves here that just take an already great racing shoe to the next level. First, there’s a substantial gel insert right beneath the top of the lacing chain, allowing you to really cinch down the tension for maximum security without the laces cutting into your tendons. On top of that, a knit collar keeps leaves and debris out of the shoe when you’re sending it through the loose stuff.

Seriously, this shoe is genius. For all these reasons and so many more, I could write a book about how this is my new, hands-down favorite for east coast racing. I know this was developed with Anton Krupicka out in Boulder, but it still feels like La Sportiva thought of nearly everything you could want in a racing shoe for the Mountain Mist 50k in Huntsville. Bravo!

REESE: I’m hot off a spicy review about the Brooks Catamount 4 — a shoe that really flopped, in my opinion. But this? This is the shoe I wanted the Catamount 4 to be, but like… more luggy. Again. A “What the” moment for me. How did La Sportiva get this so right? I’m not exaggerating when I say that nearly every aspect of this shoe is what I want in a shoe. That’s a lot coming from me, as I love a good roast.

But gotta give credit where credit is due. Amazing grip from the lugs? Yes. Lightweight and responsive? Yes. Stable but nimble? Yes. Comfortable, yes… assuming you understand Euro sizing. It felt like a second-skin kind of shoe. I ran on gravel paths and up and down technical trails. I threw everything at it, and it didn’t bat an eye. The laces? Stayed tied. The padded tongue and sock-like ankle? Give me more. La Sportiva… hello. Brooks… new phone, who dis?

What we don’t like about the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro

TAYLOR: Dude, I’m not sure what to tell you. La Sportiva nailed its intended design. There’s not really anything that I didn’t like either.

If anything, it’s the toe bumper. I could feel a little lip and firmness toward the end of the shoe when going downhill, but it didn’t cause any irritation. It’s a very minor thing for day to day runs and moderate long runs. I know that there will be some frustrations around sizing. Even though La Sportiva has really dialed in their past sizing issues, finding the “right size” may still be a challenge. Knowing about the “quarter-size” nuance will certainly help with making the right choice.

Generally, as was the case with the Prodigio Pro, I would go up a half size for daily use. Anything that’s going the ultra distance will automatically be a full size up. Some may experience that they need to go a size and a half up from their typical long-distance endeavors.

The slimmer profile will also limit those who have truly wide feet. I have a moderately wide forefoot (with bunions), and I fit into the shoe just fine once I solved for length. Either way, just know that the Prodigio Pro fits slightly slimmer than the original Prodigio because of the more specifically fitted Power Wire upper.

MICHAEL: Okay, so as you might have guessed by now, I think this shoe is wonderful. Honestly, the only thing I could think to change about it is to add an additional eyelet or two further down the lacing chain to give the upper a touch more security in the forefoot for us decidedly non-hobbit-like folk. That being said, this added security is something I might change, but is it fair to say it’s an actual problem with the shoe? I’m not really sure, to be honest, but hey, I had to come up with something to put here to keep my cred intact or something like that.

As Taylor said, the Prodigio Pro seems to run a half-Euro size small. I normally wear a US M9.5 (Euro 42.5 according to Sportiva) and received a US M10 (Euro 43 according to Sportiva), and they fit perfectly. I do prefer a slightly snug, tailored fit, though, so if you’re looking to take this shoe into the 100km-plus domain, you might consider sizing up even further.

One other thing to note — if you’re looking for a shoe for technical terrain that completely eliminates ground feel, this is not it. Since the Prodigio Pro lacks a rock plate (or any plate for that matter), it does rely on the full coverage rubber and slightly taller stack to counteract sharp objects underfoot. You might contrast this with the North Face Summit Vectiv Pro 3, whose multiple plates and firm midsole made me think I was running with wooden planks strapped to my feet.

Typically, I prefer a very thin, subtle rock plate in these situations, but the aforementioned countermeasures were successful. In fact, I enjoyed the extra trail feel that came along with its absence, and I have zero hesitation in choosing this shoe for an ultra. Just know that if you plan on running around on a trail really saturated in roots and rocks, you’re going to know they are there.

REESE: I’m in total agreement with Taylor and Michael on this. The lack of a rock plate is occasionally a bummer, but honestly, I’m willing to choose more responsible lines and try not to step directly on a rock shaped like a dagger. The foam and lugs on this shoe don’t make me miss the added protection (and weight) of a plate. I only noticed the lack of a rock plate once while testing.

Also, a note on sizing. If you are drawn to very wide toe boxes, this might not be perfect for you. A little on the snug size, which I tend to like for a trail shoe. I find it feels a bit more stable. Additionally, I did run into the shoe being a little on the small side. I normally wear a size US W7.5, and that’s what La Sportiva sent. While it was mostly fine, I can tell that if I logged a run over 20 miles, my feet might feel a little cramped. I could easily go a half size up, and it would fit perfectly. If you are someone who needs a lot of room or plan on logging some big miles (100k or more), consider a full size up from your normal shoe size.

Final thoughts on the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro

TAYLOR: Does anyone around here appreciate a good underdog story? That’s what we have on our feet here. The La Sportiva Prodigio Pro comes from an unlikely place with the basics down pat, staying true to its lineage and going all in.

This race-oriented trail shoe relies on fit, technical ingredients, and genius little nuances to ensure high performance. It’s one of the few “super” shoes best suited for moderate to technical terrain. While it boasts its best performance in this arena, the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro can absolutely crush on less-sketchy terrain and go the distance comfortably.

I love that the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro was able to take the versatility of the original model and pump up the performance in all areas.

MICHAEL: Picking up right where Best in Gear winning shoes like the Speedgoat EVO and the Endorphin Rift left off, the Prodigio Pro is the East Coast trail racing shoe of my dreams. Over any distance, at any pace, and over any terrain, I have a hard time imagining a technical trail where the light weight, versatile cushioning, dialed fit and gnarly grip of the Prodigio Pro won’t shine.

REESE: La Sportiva Prodigio Pro — the dark horse we never saw coming. This is the perfect shoe for just about every application (maybe not road racing?) I would fire emoji slash heart this review if I could.

You can pick up the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro for $195 from Running Warehouse (featuring free shipping and 90-day returns) by using the buttons below.