Around the Bay Road Race
The Around the Bay Road Race is the oldest road race in North America that is still held today and thus one of the first road races in the world to be held under the competition regulations that are still in force today. The venue is the Canadian city of Hamilton in the province of Ontario on Lake Erie ( Lake Erie ). The first run took place on Christmas Day (December 25th) 1894.
At the time, sport was almost exclusively viewed by the population as an object of general passion for betting . So the local newspaper , Hamilton Herald Newspaper , and the owner of a cigarette shop, Billy Carroll , organized and funded a competition in which the best runners in the area competed against each other. However, the intention was to send the runners over a far greater distance than just the usual laps on a running track and therefore selected a route that led along Hamilton Bay on Lake Erie and thus gave the run its name. The marathonwas not created at that time and so there was no prescribed length for a long-distance run . The first run was exactly 19 miles 168 yards (30.73 km) long. The winner was Billy Marshall with a time of 2:14 hours (the seconds were not stopped).
The run quickly became popular and Hamilton developed into the stronghold of long-distance running at the beginning of the 20th century. Two runners from Hamilton determined the action in the early years, Jack Caffery , winner in 1898 and 1900, who also won the Boston Marathon in 1900 and 1901 , and William Sherring , winner in 1899 and 1903, the Olympic marathon champion at the 1906 Olympic Games in Athens has been.
The Around the Bay Road Race was during the First World War did not take place in the years 1917, 1918 and 1919 and also found the time of the Great Depression ( Great Depression ) in the years 1925 to 1935 not take place. It is astonishing, however, that the run was held during the entire Second World War . There was a curiosity in 1962 when the race could not be organized due to road construction work. Since 1963 the race has been held over a distance of 30 km. Only in 1970 was the route extended to the official marathon length of 42.195 km, as the event was used as an elimination run for participation in the Commonwealth Games . Women have been allowed to take part in the run since 1975, but an official rating for women was not introduced until 1979.
The number of participants for the entire event, which in addition to the 30 km run also includes a 5 km run and relay races for 2 and 3 people, is limited to just under 8,000 for safety reasons. Alene Reta holds the course record over 30 km for men with 1:32:22 hours (2010) and for women, the Russian-born Canadian Lioudmila Kortchaguina with 1:46:15 hours (2002) ( 2010 ).
Individual evidence
Web links
- Official website
- Around the Bay Road Race on arrs.run with list of winners