Posted: January 23, 2006

Athletics: World Marathon Majors Announced With $1 Million Purse

From David Monti

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

By Parker Morse

BOSTON (23-Jan) -- Officials from five major marathons announced a million-dollar worldwide competitive circuit today in separate press conferences in Boston and London. "There's a million dollars in our sport today which wasn't there yesterday," said Mary Wittenberg, race director of the ING New York City Marathon.

The group, called the World Marathon Majors, includes the BAA Boston Marathon, the Flora London Marathon, the real,- Berlin Marathon, the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon, and the ING New York City Marathon. The series will crown a champion based on points scored over a two-year period at their five events, starting with this year's Boston Marathon on April 17th. The two-year periods will overlap, so champions (for men and women) will be crowned annually starting in 2007. Each champion will be awarded $500,000.

In years where an Olympic or IAAF World Championship marathon is contested, that race will be included in the scoring, meaning that there will be six qualifying marathons in most years. Points will be awarded by place, only, with 25 points for a win, 15 for a second-place finish, 10 for third, 5 for fourth and 1 for fifth. The scoring was intentionally designed to be top-heavy to take into account the varying depth of the race's elite fields.

Scoring the 2004-2005 period using this method, for example, would have crowned Evans Rutto and Catherine Ndereba as champions, each by five points over Jaouad Gharib and Paula Radcliffe, respectively.

Athletes would need three scoring performances to qualify, but a maximum of four events would be counted. "Our sport is a sport of patience," observed London race director Dave Bedford via telephone from London. "It's important that our athletes run when they feel they're ready to run well, not just because they feel like they need points."

Olympic silver medalist Mebrahtom Keflezighi, who will race in Boston next month, said that athletes would support the new series. "We will be tuned in to the title," he said. "We'll be watching closely what happens in the other races."

Speaking later on a conference call, world record holder Paul Tergat agreed. "We have been waiting for this for some time," said Tergat, the reigning New York City Marathon champion. He added: "It has given us an opportinity to profit more."

The championship series grew out of a longstanding informal professional relationship between the five races, and the new cooperation is expected to expand in other areas as well. Horst Milde, founder of the Berlin marathon whose son Mark is now race director, explained, "I used to tell [former NYCM director] Allan Steinfeld that what he put in his brochures, I was copying the following week."

"The group collectively has strengths that will help us in many different areas and provide an opportunity to show anyone else how we do what we do," expanded Chicago race director Carey Pinkowski.

Together, the five races have 150,000 entrants (with over 300,000 applying for entry,) and award some $3 million in prize money, and dole out millions more in appearance fees. They are watched by an estimated 5 million spectators on the ground, and as many as 250 million through television broadcasts.

The group said that they had worked closely with the IAAF to plan the series. Along with including the championship marathons as qualifying races, the IAAF is also giving the top-twenty finishers in each of the Majors "A" qualifying status for the World Championships marathon, and may extend this to the Olympic marathon in the future. Boston's point-to-point course, in particular, has not previously been a allowed as a qualifying race.

Whether or not there will be a negative effect on other races, particularly the elite-only marathons in Japan, remains to be seen. The five race directors indicated today that the World Marathon Majors could be expanded, but did not indicate that there were any other events which would be admitted anytime soon.

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