London Marathon becomes elite-only race running laps in St James' Park

It is the news that thousands of runners, who have continued to toil and boil throughout lockdown, have long feared: this year’s London Marathon, which had been pushed back from April to October, will no longer be a mass-participation event after plans to use “revolutionary” Bluetooth technology to safely allow 45,000 competitors to social distance were abandoned following a jump in coronavirus cases in the UK.

An elite-only, crowd-free race will be staged instead, as first revealed by the Guardian in April, with athletes running 19.8 laps of a looped course in St James’ Park on 4 October before finishing on the Mall as normal.

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In a further blow to fun and club runners, who raised a record £66.4m for charity in 2019, next year’s London Marathon will also be pushed back from its traditional April slot to 3 October 2021 to allow more time for a Covid-19 vaccine to be found.

In a letter to participants the event director, Hugh Brasher, said he appreciated there would be disappointment at the decision, but organisers had no other choice.

He said: “We had hoped that by moving our event to October, by changing the way we organised the event and by using some amazing proximity technology that is about to be launched worldwide, we would be able to safely run or walk the 26.2 miles from Greenwich to Westminster and, in doing so, demonstrate one of the founding principles of the London Marathon – to show a sense of achievement in a sometimes troubled world.

“However the recent surges in Covid-19 as lockdown was eased and the cancellation of the trial return of spectators at sporting events has stopped us in our tracks. Therefore we cannot embark on that intensely personal journey from Blackheath to Buckingham Palace, with the crowd cheering us on, with the gods of our sport leading the way, running together in mind, body and spirit with tens of thousands of people.”

Organisers are hoping that everyone with a place in the 2020 event will still run or walk the 26.2-mile marathon distance on 4 October, albeit not on the traditional London course, in order to raise money for charity and promote the benefits of good health. Brasher confirmed that everyone who does so would still get a coveted finisher medal and T-shirt – and that runners and charities would also be able to defer their place to a future London Marathon in 2021, 2022 or 2023.

“While the London Marathon we know and love cannot take place on Sunday 4 October, I ask you to join us in a new London Marathon, on the same day, in the same spirit, but in a way that not only helps our charities with desperately needed fundraising, but also shows the spirit of our community is not dimmed and burns as brightly as ever,” said Brasher.

“We believe that Sunday 4 October will be a London Marathon like no other. Together we will get through it. That is the spirit of the London Marathon.”

Brasher also revealed organisers had spent five months working on a socially distanced mass-participation race, using revolutionary Bluetooth and ultra-wide ranging technology that would have alerted runners if they got too close to each other, only for the plan to be scuppered at the last moment.

“This new technology would have enabled us to accurately monitor every participant’s distance from each other, work out if the participant spent more than 15 minutes within 1.5 metres (or any distance we set) of anyone else and then contact them post-event if anyone had informed us that they had contracted Covid-19 in the two weeks after the event.”

Brasher said that the biggest challenge his team faced did not come from having 45,000 runners on the course – but the “multiple issues” of managing 750,000 spectators, the fears of a second spike, and the concern about the pressures the race might put on the NHS. “Despite all our efforts it has not been possible to go ahead with a mass socially distanced walk or run.”

Five elite athletes have been confirmed, with the long-awaited showdown between Kenya’s world marathon record holder Eliud Kipchoge and the world 5,000m and 10,000m record holder Kenenisa Bekele headlining the men’s race and Brigid Kosgei, the women’s world record holder, also going for her second London title. A number of other big names are expected to be named in the coming weeks.

Brasher confirmed the race would conform to official World Athletics standards and insisted it was not unfeasible to expect a world record given the calibre of those competing and the new course. “It’s faster than the normal London marathon course,” he said.

He also confirmed that while there would be no spectators cheering the elite athletes on in the biosecure bubble in St James’ Park, organisers planned to use “virtual reality crowds” to recreate the atmosphere of a big event.