byLarry Eder
The Valencia Marathon cancelled its mass event to be held in December. Today, the Valencia Marathon announced that it would hold an elite event only, on December 6, 2020. The distance? A half marathon with elite athletes only. Details to come….
Valencia, photo by Valencia Marathon
Valencia Marathon announces it will hold a top-level elite event in 2020
â— The event will be held on the 6th of December with the most ambitious goals together with an independent half marathon race only for professionals
Valencia, 11 September 2020.- The Valencia Marathon Trinidad Alfonso EDP will hold a top-level athletics event on the 6th of December 2020. The Organisation, run by SD Correcaminos and the Valencia City Council, announces that there will be a professional version (Elite Edition) of the marathon race as well as a half marathon event. Both events will have the most ambitious sporting goals, as there will be a team of elite athletes who will approach the world records for both distances.
This Elite Edition will be possible thanks to the financial support of businessman Juan Roig through the Trinidad Alfonso Foundation, which he presides over. The Foundation, which is the main collaborator of both races, thus drives this top-level double event within the #EActÃVateSport strategies that it launched to promote the reactivation of sporting events in Valencia. Also the loyalty shown by the sponsors and collaborators of the Valencia Marathon and Half Marathon in 2020 will help this event to take place with the aim of continuing promoting Valencia around the world.
After the cancellation announcement of the popular race, given the impossibility of guaranteeing the safety of the 30,000 entered participants due to the global health crisis caused by COVID-19, the Organisation confirms that this elite edition will be held for a maximum of 300 professional runners from around the world, who will be invited and confirmed by the race selection committee. Apart from fighting to set their best marks for the marathon and half marathon distances, the male and female athletes participating in Valencia Ciudad del Running will pursue the mark that will give them the chance of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021.
This year, due to the COVID-19 crisis, only the London Marathon, which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2020, like the Valencia Marathon, and the 2020 World Half Marathon in Poland have remained on the top-level international schedule. Both will host professional athletes only, for health and safety reasons.
With the maximum health controls and the safety required for such an event, Valencia Ciudad del Running will hold the great athletics event on road this year, with about 250 professional marathon runners from all around the world, including the participants of the MyBest42 elite programme in the hunt of the Olympic minimums, as well as another fifty athletes looking for their best along the 21,097.5 metres, in an event which will be held in parallel on the 6th of December. They will not take place at the same time in the streets of the city of running, though.
Strict health control and a reduced circuit
The organisation will create a healthy zone around the event and will take exceptional safety measures to guarantee a great sporting event with minimal health risk. The event will have its own medical unit, which will include the support of an external consultancy to collect all data and guarantee, if necessary, the traceability of the steps of athletes and people involved in the organisation of the race. In addition, the tests will be held in a reduced circuit coordinated with local authorities, to reduce the impact on the city and the health risk.
Paco Borao, president of SD Correcaminos and race director, assured that “holding this great athletics event will mean that Valencia will host the most important race of the year 2020 in the whole world, not only because of the marks to target for both distances but also because of the list of elite runners who will seek to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. We are convinced that in a year as complicated as this, the name of Valencia will once again be heard throughout the world.”
Valencian Regional Marathon Championship
The event in the streets of Valencia on the 6th of December will also serve to host the Regional Marathon Championship, which will host twenty-five Valencian federated athletes. Thus, a regional competition adds to this celebration of athletics making room for Valencian athletics in this great event.
