Will the Marathon Majors get in the way of the London Olympic Marathon?

It happens every four years, the Olympics, one of the most popular sporting events in the world. The pinnacle of every athlete’s career?

But will all the world’s top marathon runners be on the starting line in London on August 5th (Women) and August 12th (Men)?

Unlike most of the other events in the Olympics the marathon is not an event that an athlete can run every month or so. Most top marathon runners have to carefully plan their schedule and aim to run only one or two a year and with sufficient recovery between each.

Will the 5 Big City Marathons get in the way of the London Olympic Marathon? Lets look at the dates: We have the London and Boston Marathons taking place in April (16th and 22nd) and Berlin, Chicago and New York Marathon in the fall (Sept 30th, Oct 12th and Nov 4th).

So will we have the top runners running in London and Boston 4 months before the Olympics? 4 months should be enough time for them to recovery – shouldn’t it? But how many of them will compete in the Olympics and then run in Berlin (a mere month and later), Chicago (two months) or New York (3 months)?

But surely it is a no brainer – the Olympics only comes round once every four years and it’s every athletes dream to run in the Olympics, so this will be their focus? Well you would think so but there is one other factor – MONEY. The Olympics do not actually offer prize money but that said individual countries usually awards their athletes prize money and of course there is the resultant advertising revenue from being an Olympic champion. But the Marathon Majors offer BIG prize money and you also get huge advertising revenue from being a winner of one of these big city marathons.

So will MONEY be a factor when the world’s top marathon runners are deciding which races they will run this year? For instance will 2010 and 2011 Berlin Marathon winner Patrick Makau possibly jeopardize a fat pay cheque and his chance of a hat trick of wins by running in the Olympics 50 days earlier? He may indeed agree that being an Olympic Champion would be better but is he confident enough to beat what will be a much stronger field than what he is likely to face in Berlin? Will Russia’s Liliya Shobukhova be prepared to run strongly in London and possibly miss out on winning New York (13 weeks later) for the 4th time in a row and collecting a massive winner’s cheque?

I don’t know but it will be interesting to see what happens!

David ‘The Running Scotsman in Toronto