The London Marathon 2020, which will be the 40th edition of the most famous marathon in the world, will be witnessing a new high footfall of 457,861 participants who have registered in the ballot for the same. This number has seen about 10.5 percent increase when compared to the previous edition. The number of applicants alone from the natives of the UK has seen a rise of 7.4 percent when compared to the last version, i.e., from 347,876 to 373,736. Also, the number of international people who applied via the international ballot has also seen a rise of 26.9 percent compared to the previous edition, i.e., from 66,292 to 84,125.
Seeing such an overwhelming response for the 40th edition, event director Hugh Brasher quoted that the success for the same goes majorly to the extraordinary, inspirational effect that the 39th edition of the event showed, which was conducted on April 28 of this year. He extended by saying that the primary goal of the entire event is to increase the awareness amongst the people and inspire them to take up the event and that it was very much overwhelming to see more than 210,000 natives of the UK participating for the first time in 2020 version.
Further statistics on the registration for the 40th edition revealed that there had been a slight increase in the percentage of the runners who have never participated in the event before from 54 percent to 56 percent and the same has also been seen in the case of the women runners from 44 percent to 48 percent.
Mr. Brasher, whose father was one of the co-founders of London Marathon back in 1981, further added that in the first edition, out of the 6300 participants who finished the race, a little lesser than 300 were women and the trend has been increasing since then. For the 40th edition, more than 179,000 women from the UK have registered, and this high figure has been witnessed for the third time in a row. The proportion of the first time women runners from the UK is more than that of the men for the next run, i.e. 54.4 percent of the former compared to 45.6 percent of the later.
Coming to the fundraising part of the event, the figures for the 2019 one took the event’s total income to over 1 billion pounds, and all of it has been raised solely for charitable purposes, which is also one of the other mottos for the event. For this year, the charity of the year was Dementia Revolution, which was jointly conducted by the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK. For the next year, the charity of the year would be Mencap, and the Virgin Money London Marathon is scheduled to be organized on April 26, 2020. The entrants will be notified about the ballot results in October.
Seeing such a response, it is highly expected for the event to reach new heights of success and create new records in the history of the event.
