Gold Coast Marathon Paves the Way for 2018 Commonwealth Games
June 14th 2012 04:21
“With just over two weeks until this year's Gold Coast Marathon, entries are flowing in. This is a good indicator that more than 25,000 runners and walkers will line up on the starting line, including more than 6,300 from interstate and close to 2,000 from overseas,” Premier Newman said.
"Tourism is one of the four pillars of the LNP Government's economic strategy and it's events like this that help make the industry so important,” he said.
The Gold Coast Airport Marathon joins an exciting calendar of major sporting events for the Gold Coast which includes the Pan Pacific Masters Games, Castrol Edge Rugby Championship, Magic Millions Race Carnival, Quicksilver Pro Surfing Competition, Gold Coast Rugby Sevens and the Armor All Gold Coast 600.
Chairman of Events Queensland Gold Coast Kerry Watson said the broadcast coverage of this year's Gold Coast Airport Marathon would showcase this magnificent event destination to the world.
“Last year the potential global television audience was 265 million people in more than 100 countries and plans are for a similar reach once again,” Mr Watson said.
“Last year the 22-year-old race record was broken by in the men's marathon and the depth in this year's field could see both men's and women's race records broken again.”
Some of this year’s competitors boast a personal best time of less than Kenyan Nicholas Manzas’ race record time of 2 hours, 10 minutes, 1 second. These include Evans Cheruiyot (2:06:25) and David Mandago (2:06:53) of Kenya, Yuki Kawauchi (2:08:37) of Japan and Alemayehu Shumye (2:08:46) and Berhanu Shiferaw (2:09:19) from Ethiopia.
The women’s race record of 2:29:29 has previously been bettered by Worknesh Tola (2:25:37) of Ethiopia, Hellen Kimutai (2:25:53) of Kenya and Madoka Ogi (2:26:55) of Japan.
However, Premier Newman said most of the runners in the Gold Coast Airport Marathon were everyday joggers and people out to achieve a personal best while raising money for charity.
"The Cancer Council Queensland is the official charity for the seventh year running and have raised more than $200,000 through the event over this time," Mr Newman said.
"So far runners in this year's event have raised more than $200,000 for charity this year alone,” he said.
The 34th annual Gold Coast Airport Marathon will be held over the weekend of 30 June and 1 July. Races will include the Gold Coast Airport Marathon, ASICS Half Marathon, Southern Cross University 10km Run, Queensland Health 5.7km Challenge and Dreamworld Junior Dash over 4km and 2km.
| 29 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog