Officials at London 2012 have arranged a series of events for Thursday featuring the men's world 100 metres and women's 200m champions Tyson Gay and Allyson Felix, two American athletes who are sponsored by the sportswear company.

The events include turning the London Millennium Bridge into a 100m race track where Gay and Felix will be joined by 20 12 year-olds on the bridge to help launch the sponsorship.

The deal is set to be worth around £80 million to London 2012 and adidas will join other top tier sponsors Lloyds TSB and EDF.

Adidas' association with the Olympic Games stretches back to 1928 when the company's shoes were worn at the Games for the first time.

Among the athletes to have worn adidas shoes when they won gold medals were Jesse Owens when he claimed four titles at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and Emil Zatopek when he took an unprecdented triple of 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon in Helsinkin in 1952.

Nadia Comaneci was also wearing adidas kit when she became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 while Britain's Daley Thompson has worn the company's sportswear for all of his career, including his victories in the decathlon at the 1980 and 1984 Games.

Adidas has also had a long-standing agreement with the British Olympic Association to provide kit for teams competing in the Games.

The agreement with London 2012 will see adidas provide more than 1.4 million products to federations, volunteers, officials and others.

It will be the third consecutive Games that adias has fulfilled this role.

They had a similar role in Athens in 2004 and have also signed a deal with the Beijing organisers of 2008 to become an official partner.

LOCOG refused to comment.