The Eldoret City Marathon is to be held now in April 2021, and it is now a qualifying event for Abbott WMM. Justin Lagat sent this piece in on the postponement and change in status of the growing event.
The third edition of the Eldoret City marathon will now be held in April 2021. The race was postponed in April due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and the race organizer expressed regret that the race would no longer be held this year but was instead scheduled for next year. He, however, urged athletes to continue training to keep their sharpness and fitness despite the disappointment.
In an event that saw the marathon plant 15,000 tree seedlings at Kapseret forest near Eldoret on Friday 11th September, the race director, Moses Tanui, delivered the good news that the Eldoret City Marathon had finally been recognized by the Abbott World Marathon Majors as a qualiying event.
This is a great step towards the ambitious plan of the race organizers to eventually rank the Eldoret City Marathon among the largest and most renowned marathons in the world, including London, Berlin, New York, Chicago, Boston, and Tokyo marathons.
Only on its second edition, the Eldoret city marathon which is sponsored by the Uasin Gishu government had been touted as the richest marathon in Africa. And now, with it being recognized by the Abbott world marathon majors as meeting the international standards, it has now taken a big step towards becoming the greatest marathon in Africa.
One advantage that this marathon continues to have is its location within the source of the world's best marathon runners. It will always get the best elite runners to participate even without the need to spend a lot of money on the appearance and travel expenses of most of the elite runners.
With the hard work from the organizers, it will now remain a matter of time before (we hope) that the marathon is finally added to the WMM series.
Andrew Chelogoi, the race chairman, thanked sponsors and partners for their continued support and announced that the Eldoret City Marathon would erect a fence around the 9.6 acres of land where the tree seedlings were planted to ensure they are protected from damage from both domestic and wild animals.
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