World Marathon Majors: nervous excitement as Sydney closes in on joining the big 6 races
City’s 42km race will join New York, London, Boston, Berlin, Chicago and Tokyo if it passes the assessment criteria for second straight year
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42 kilometres around the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors will soon add a seventh race to the elite series.
The Sydney Marathon will become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year.
“We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney on Thursday.
“We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on paper, I feel we’re ticking all the boxes. So we’ve just got to go out there now and deliver the event as per the plans and I’m sure we’ll meet the criteria.”
Larden has been race director since 2005, when there were 2,300 finishers, and has overseen the growth to the 25,000 runners who will test themselves over a newly rejigged course on Sunday.
“It’s taken me 18 years to build it to 5,000 and two years to get it to 25,000,” Larden said.
