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Plans revealed for London Marathon after vaccine rollout

By Pa
January 22, 2021

LONDON: 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 told the PA news agency: “It is a terrible time at the 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”.

“And that’s what the London Marathon has done over the last 40 years and that’s absolutely what we hope to deliver on October 3, 2021.”

Last year’s Virgin Money London Marathon 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 told PA 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. And there aren’t many positive things coming out of the last 10 months.”