A way forward

A way forward

Despite the flurry of recordbreaking times distance running as a participatory sport remains diminished by mass events mistakenly being seen as a ‘super-spreader’ mechanism.

Three months ago distance running events seemed to be starting up again after a lengthy period in which the sport had slowly ground to a halt. The first wave of coronavirus infections had receded and race organisers started planning to restart mass races on a reduced scale.

The events that made headlines were small elite-only affairs with a field counted in the tens rather than thousands. But they were eyecatching: the half marathon in Prague gave us a new women-only world record; London Marathon staged a dramatic finish in which Eliud Kipchoge did not feature. But these were multi-lap courses more reminiscent of stadium athletics than popular marathons – except that spectators had to be actively discouraged from coming to watch.

That same weekend the Košice Peace Marathon had to slash numbers from the 5000 planned to 200 to satisfy local health concerns; the following week both the Riga and Bucharest marathons were cancelled at the last moment and a similar fate befell the Belgrade Marathon a week later, followed by Lausanne’s ‘covidcompatible’ race for 1000 runners succumbing to a resurgence of the virus.

The trend continued into November with Athens Marathon The Authentic being cancelled less than a week before it was due to be run, in a scaled-down anti-covid form, as Greece went into a second lockdown.

There were some races that did go ahead with thousands of runners, but not many of them: that same weekend in November Istanbul Marathon, and several weeks before it the Half Marathon, was notable for its 4000-strong field. The organisers’ radical anti-covid precautions were to move the start and finish area to a huge open space to allow safe distancing between runners before and after the race. To achieve this the course had to be completely changed which involved making a double crossing of the Bosphorus Bridge. The mass field was separated from the elite race with groups of four runners starting every five seconds.

Elite-only races with small fields but big budgets and TV coverage continued to be the only realistic option in many places. Fast times resulted in the Delhi Half Marathon and in Valencia, where a new men’s world record in the half marathon was set. The usually elite-only field of the Fukuoka Marathon, this year at 100 runners, became one of the largest of these restyled races.

As Europe was hit by this ‘second wave’ of the virus and contingent lockdowns and cancellations there were other places which fared better. The 2020 Eva Air Half Marathon in Chinese Taipei on 25 October attracted 20,000 runners registered for three categories (half marathon, 10 km and 3 km races). The number of participants was especially significant in the face of COVID-19 border restrictions. In China itself races went ahead with mass fields – from Shanghai on 18 October to Guangzhou on 13 December with only four of the 16 World Athletics ‘label’ races scheduled being cancelled.

Japanese races had already, with a few notable exceptions, been cleared from the winter season right through to April. Yet the popular Ekiden university and corporate team relay events, reaching a climax in the National Championships on New Year’s day, were held and marked out a path back towards greater normality.

A study of covid infections at athletic events and road races paved the way for this to happen by giving the lie to the misconception that mass running events were “superspreaders” of the virus. On 9 November JAAF published the results of research into 787 races and track meets held nationwide from 1 July through to 4 October.

The report, analysing returns from 47 of the 53 organisations responsible for the meets, documented only one case of someone who was involved in one of the races contracting COVID-19 in the two weeks following the event that they attended. More than 570,000 athletes and 98,000 officials had taken part in the 787 races.

It was only towards the very end of the year that a way forward was presented – the distribution of a vaccine started in early December promises to provide the path out of the Covid wilderness – but not very quickly.