Posted: January 12, 2006

Athletics: Major Marathon Announcement Expected

From David Monti

© 2005 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

By Bob Ramsak

Five of the world's most important marathons signaled the world athletics media today that they plan to make a major announcement later this month regarding "an exciting and historic new competition for the sport's professional runners," according to an advisory received by Race Results Weekly this morning.

The advisory was sent jointly by the BAA Boston Marathon, the Flora London Marathon, the real,- Berlin Marathon, the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon, and the ING New York City Marathon announcing two news conferences --one in Boston and the other in London-- on Monday, Jan. 23, followed by an international teleconference. Between the two venues, each of the event's race directers will appear. In addition, Meb Keflezighi will appear at the Boston press conference, and Paul Tergat will appear in London.

The five marathons, which jointly revealed that they were cooperating on standards and possibly a competitive program at last summer's IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki, announced that they have adopted the name "World Marathon Majors," according to the advisory.

With the exception of Boston, these five races are in the top-5 of the world's marathons in terms of finishers (all but Boston had over 30,000 finishers in 2005), and are widely seen as the top commercial marathons in the world. All of the world records (male, female mixed-gender race, female single-gender race) were set within this group, and according to the Association of Road Running Statisticians, they awarded a total of $3.2 million in publicly-reported prize money and time bonuses in 2005. These events also paid millions more in appearance fees, but those figures are not released to the public.

Given the financial might of these five races, their announcement is likely to have a significant impact on the sport of professional marathon running. However, the nature of the "new competition" remains unknown until the announcement 12 days from now.

Subscribe to the Runner's Web Weekly Digest