Posted: March 28, 2005

Athletics: Des Moines Marathon and Half Marathon Cancelled

USA Women's Half Marathon National Championships Will Move to Another Location

According to Tom Witosky of the Des Moines Register, the Des Moines Marathon and Half Marathon, scheduled for Sept. 18, will be cancelled due to a lack of sponsor. The cancellation announcement was made by event founder and race director Helene Neville, who explained, "to make it work, you have to fund-raise pretty much everything. To date, we have raised zero dollars. That's the problem."

The USA Women's Half Marathon National Championships had been scheduled to run in conjunction with the Des Moines Marathon and Half Marathon, and will now be moved to another location. The USATF-sponsored event had been expected to attract some of the top female runners in the U.S.

Neville found the cancellation particularly difficult because the event had been enjoying steady participation growth and was receiving national attention. In 2004, 3,082 people from 45 states and eight countries participated, up from 2,100 runners in 2003 and 1,700 in 2002.

"We had a vision to bring as many people to Des Moines as possible and I think we accomplished that goal," Neville said. "We met that goal by making the event unique and appealing."

Neville noted that attracting sponsors for the event had always been a struggle, with fund-raising never exceeding $30,000 in any year and competing events making sponsorships scarce. Mediacom was the title sponsor in 2003 and 2004, and both agreements were one-year deals providing about $25,000 each year, Neville said.

According to Neville, Mediacom did not respond to a sponsorship inquiry this year. Race officials also sent sponsorship inquiries to about 300 other companies, but received no positive responses.

However, while Jon Koebrick, senior director of government relations for Mediacom, acknowledged that Mediacom officials hadn't spoke with Neville, he indicated that Mediacom had not made a final decision on their sponsorship of the marathon.

"This decision comes as news to us," Koebrick said. "We made no decision on whether to continue our sponsorship and are saddened if it is not going to go forward. We believed the event was a very good one for Des Moines and were proud to be a participant in it."

The Des Moines Marathon has had financial problems since its inception in 2002, and still owes about $9,000 to the City of Des Moines for police traffic control assistance for the 2004 event.

Neville notes that the race committee were all volunteers who worked hard to make the event happen. "We have done this as a labor of love, even to the point where some of our committee members have spent their own money to make this work," Neville said. " We just thought with all of the adversity and problems in the past, that if we kept putting on an awesome event with such momentum, people would look to us positively and sponsor us. This year was the worst. We have nobody, so we aren't going to continue to put this on."