The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
London Marathon could host 100,000
Ambitious plans to allow 100,000 people to take part in this year’s London Marathon have been announced.
A record 50,000 people will run in central London on October 3 with another 50,000 running 26.2 miles at a location of their choice for the virtual event.
Hugh Brasher, the marathon’s event director, said he was confident the mass run could go ahead in October after Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Sunday that all adults would be offered a first vaccination dose by September.
Brasher terrible moment.
“It is difficult in a way for a lot of people to imagine from where we are now about what October might look like but the government has said that everyone in this country should be vaccinated by September.”
Brasher, whose father Chris Brasher co-founded the London Marathon in 1981, said the vaccination programme, which has already seen 4.6 million people get their first dose, and the government pledge meant London Marathon Events “believe in October we can deliver something that once again will show humanity and mankind at its best which was one of the original goals that my father and John Disley put into the event”.
He said: “Human beings want to be together, we want to celebrate, it’s part of what most human beings want to do, whether it’s at festivals, whether it’s at a pub, whether it’s at a sports event, that camaraderie, that feeling of being at one, even with our differences, is something that I believe we all miss.
“And so coming up, believing that this can happen, looking at what the science is saying, that is how we can be so hopeful and optimistic about delivering this.”
Asked how organisers would make elite and mass race participants feel said: time
“It at is a the
confident about taking part, Brasher said: “I think the elite is probably quite easy, they are running so quickly there aren’t many people around them.”
He said plans to sociallydistance runners had been made in 2020 before the event was made virtualonly, except for elite athletes, and technology had moved forward since then.
Brasher added: “There’s still lots of unknowns. And we will change our plans, develop the plans, to be able to deliver what we are announcing today.
“We will work with governments, we will work with the scientists, we will work with people in tech to do this and do it in a safe manner.”
Last year’s event was postponed from April to October due to the coronavirus pandemic and then changed to a virtual event where most participants completed the distance from home.
A total of 37,966 finished the virtual event in 2020
giving it an official Guinness World Records title for the “most users to run a remote marathon in 24 hours”.
Brasher said that launching the virtual event had showed “a new path” for the London Marathon and he was “delighted” to announce a hybrid event for 2021 which was expected to continue in future years.
“The London Marathon happened on the streets around the world and that was incredible and we’re amplifying that in 2021,” he said. “It’s an incredible way of helping people, to motivate them, to raise more money for charity.”
Runners raised £66 million for charity in 2019 and Brasher added: “So we don’t think we are going to double that by doubling the number of people but it still will increase that and it will allow us to be much more diverse, it will be more inclusive and we think it is a real taste of the future and a future that definitely
we would not have imagined 12 months ago.” Brasher said having 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds to complete the distance in the virtual event “changed the pressure” and allowed more people to be “part of something that has become a British institution”.
Asked if allowing people to get the same medal and T-shirt for doing the distance in a 24-hour period might devalue the showcase event, he said: “It is an incredible achievement to do 26.2 miles.”
Brasher added: “It just really helped people in a pretty dark time in October and we absolutely believe it will do that again this year.”
Everyone who entered the ballot for the 2021 London Marathon will find out on Monday February 8 if they have been successful.
Unsuccessful applicants will have an exclusive window from February 9-16 to enter the virtual event.
General entries will open on Tuesday February 16.