Posted: November 3, 2005

Athletics: 'Run Vienna – Enjoy Mozart’ Is the Next Innovation at the Vienna City Marathon

The Vienna City Marathon has always been an event of innovations. Back in 1995 Austria’s biggest one-day sporting event was the first marathon worldwide to introduce the chip timing system. This quickly became a standard in international road running. Five years ago Vienna’s organisers arranged that runners were able to order text messages with their finishing times to be sent on mobile phones. This year runners and spectators were provided with split times and other race information every five kilometres through instant text messages.

For next year’s 23rd edition of the Vienna City Marathon on 7th May, which will attract about 22,000 participants in various running events, race director Wolfgang Konrad and his team will introduce another innovation. But this time it is something unique that can not be copied anywhere else in the world. The motto in 2006 will be: ,Run Vienna – enjoy Mozart’. Organisers will combine Vienna’s premier sporting event with what the Austrian capital is very famous for: Classical music and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Since it will be 250 years ago that Mozart was born, 2006 will be the 'Year of Mozart’. His music will play a major part in next year’s marathon. It will be played along the course. And runners may also book a special Mozart sightseeing tour or an evening of music when they register for the race.

“The Vienna City Marathon still has a lot of potential. In the long term it is our aim to establish the race as a world class product”, Wolfgang Konrad said. And the marathon’s marketing specialist Andreas Sachs explains: “We will be neither faster nor bigger than Berlin or London. But we have a great chance of developing our race into a unique marathon because of Vienna’s musical and cultural background.”

Nonetheless the Vienna City Marathon, which boosts the most imposing cultural marathon course worldwide, has produced a number of high-class results in recent years. Course records stand at 2:08:35 hours (Kenya’s Samson Kandie in 2004) and 2:23:47 (Italy’s Maura Viceconte in 2000), which proofs that Vienna not only offers a unique but also a fast course. This year’s winner Mubarak Shami (Qatar) became more prominent recently, when he won the silver medal at the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships.

For more information please visit: www.vienna-marathon.com.