Blackmores Sydney Running Festival, more than a big city marathon!

Sunday September 17 saw a record field of 17,500 people line up on a spectacular Sydney morning in the annual Blackmores Sydney Running Festival. The festival includes four separate events that all start at Milsons Point and travel over the Sydney Harbour Bridge finishing at the Sydney Opera House. For the serious there is the Blackmores Sydney Marathon and the Blackmores Half Marathon, an Australian Championship this year along with the more enjoyable The Sunday Telegraph body+soul Bridge Run of about 9km and the fun The Sunday Telegraph Family Run of about 4km.

This event really seems to have turned the corner after entries declined in 2004 at only 12,000 when taken over by event management company Pont3, owned by former distance runner Wayne Larden. Since then the Pont3 team has spent a considerable amount of time and money on repositioning the event to appeal to a wider audience with the inclusion of the Family Run and brand new look and feel while focusing on the core asset of running the Bridge. It has since grown by 38% and for the first time in the history of the event a profit was delivered to the sports governing body and event owners, Athletics Australia.

CEO of Athletics Australia, Danny Corcoran said, “We are really pleased with the turnaround with the event. Sydney needs to have a world-class marathon and to do that there needs to be other events for the wider community to enter and support the marathon. To this end Pont3 have re-created the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival so that it appeals to everyone and as such it is finally becoming a financially sustainable event.”

“With growth of 38% over two years and the trend expected to continue we will soon see what will be a major international road race and marathon.”

The event kicked off with the Australian Half Marathon Championship at 6.30am, where a good field of men and women were contesting the title including the winner of a major road race in Thailand Srisung Boonthung, flown over by event sponsor Blackmores. He was up against the likes of Victorian national representative Dave Ruschena and perennial Sydney road racer, Charlie Low who was due to jet off to the Hawaii Ironman a week later. Srisung took the lead early opening a gap within the first kilometer. He was chased the entire route by Ruschena and in the end won by a whisker to his Victorian pursuer.

The women’s field was hot with the return of Commonwealth Games Marathon Champion, Kerryn McCann, she was in town as ambassador for Blackmores and took her role seriously as she donned the racing flats for her first serious outing since the Games. She was up against some stiff competition from Queenslands Clare Geraghty and Helen Stanton along with Japans Rie Ueno and a host of locals all trying to make their mark in the Australian Championship. McCann like the men, stamped her authority on the race relatively early and made the going tough for Geraghty the only real contender for the title everyone expected Kerryn to take home. McCann did win over Geraghty in the end and it marked a milestone for the Wollongong whiz by making it the 21st straight year Australian Championship medals.

Second event to take to the streets was the Wheelchair Marathon at 7.08am with a small but extremely elite field that included the Olympic Champion, Kurt Fearnley. He was up against Paul Nunnari who looks like he could win the World Strongman Title he’s that ripped! They tore away from the start at blistering speed on what is considered a difficult course for wheelies (or any athlete for that matter) to set an amazing winning time of 1hr40.00 for Fearnley. Nunnari took second followed by William Tan from Kogarah.

The open Marathon then took off at 7.10 with a field of approximately 1400 taking the challenge of 42km through Sydney’s winding, undulating streets. A drama was to unfold that left the leaders wondering what was going on until about the 25km mark when they finally saw the 2005 winner Julius Maratim giving chase at what looked like world record half marathon pace. Maratim who was at the start line warming up actually missed the gun, by a full three minutes. He was caught on camera bolting from the start line and images of Maratim on the Network Seven national broadcast showed him tearing the field apart like they were standing still. Some competitors at the finish recall seeing the diminutive Kenyan streak past them and at the same time putting the final nail in their already battered bodies.

Not to let an opportunity slip from the start the leaders quickly formed into a pack including Sydney’s Glenn Guzzo & Jeremy Horne, Phillip Muia of Kenya and debutant Falk Cierpinski from Germany. Cierpinski was of interest mainly because of his pedigree, his father, Waldimar, happened to win two Olympic Gold medals for the marathon racing for former East Germany in 1976 and 1980. So all eyes in Europe were on Falks performance who actually came to Australia so he could fly under the radar so to speak (although news coverage of his performance was widespread after the event). Back to the action and by 6km Guzzo was starting to pressure Cierpinski and Muia to test the waters particularly since Muia seemed to be waiting for his Kenyan teammate who was still in hot pursuit.

By the 8km mark though Muia had given up waiting and decided to open up a bit of a lead on Guzzo who had pulled away from Cierpinski a kilometer or two earlier. Maratim was flying though and by the time the field was in Centennial Park Maratim was passing one of the Sydney favourites Jeremy Horne and moving into 5^th position. Remember that this is after starting 3minutes behind he was into 5^th by about 10km!

At the turnaround point near Randwick Race Course, which is about 20km into the race, the front of the field saw Maratim chasing at breakneck speed and our guess is that they all would have been adding one place to their position from that point on. By 25km Maratim hit the lead smoking past his compatriot Muia who most thought would help Maratim out for the remainder of the race. That wasn’t to be, Maratim had a bee in his bonnet and he was waiting for nobody. He was in a very fast rhythm and his class was shining through every step of the way. For Maratim who came into the race with a PB of 2hr19min he was to have one of his most disappointing and pleasing performances all in the one day. He went on to win his second title with a gun time of 2hr19.51 but the remarkable thing was that his net time would have been a 3 minute personal best of 2hr16.31!

Maratim was followed in by Muia making it one two for Kenya with Glenn Guzzo from Sydney taking out third with a time of 2hr22.52. Cieprinski’s debut saw him collect 4^th with 2hr24.27. He later told organisers that he only did 8 weeks of marathon training, as a former triathlete with a maximum weekly distance of about 80km, his last 8 weeks saw that climb to a fairly meager 120km. Look out for this guy who has just announced a switch from triathlon to full time marathon running!

What was surprising was the quality of the women’s field with the likes of Magda Karimali-Poulos, Japans Naoko Tsuchiya, Sydneys Jenny Wickham and Verity Tolhurst as well as a host of others. The Japanese Tsuchiya was making her marathon debut after winning a major international half in Japan and being flown out here as part of her prize. She proved a smart competitor though following in the shadows of Poulos who took the bull by the horns from the start. Poulos looked strong and her experience was showing through as she dragged Tsuchiya away from the rest of the field. Unfortunately for her though the wily Japanese competitor covered her every move. In the end Tsuchiya got away from Poulos to take her the title in her debut with a time of 2hr48.44. She was followed by Poulos, Wickham and Tollhurst.

At 7.30am the Family Run started and this year saw the field more than double in size. This was an unexpected but welcome surprise for the organisers although it did throw up some operational issues. The starts were worked out on a certain increase in numbers and due to the much larger than expected increase the tail of the Family Run field backed all the way across the Harbour Bridge when the next event started making the leaders job of that event even more difficult.

So 3500 kids, mums, grandpas, grandmas, baby’s, joggers, women and men took on this event and made for a colourful addition to the Festival.

The next semi-serious event was the Sunday Telegraph body+soul Bridge Run which is about 9km, setting off at 8.10am. As we’ve just explained the leaders were quickly playing dodge the pram as they weaved their way across the Cahill Expressway and onto clear road at Macquarie Street. Last years second placegetter Mark Tucker was in the lead and inexplicably he took a wrong turn and instead of going up Macquarie Street he went down leaving Caleb Wegner and Barry Keem in the lead. The course for this run is spectacular after taking in the Harbour Bridge and Cahill Expressway it goes into the Royal Botanic Gardens for a loop before coming back down Macquarie Street to the Opera House finish. Both Keem and Wegner were battling it out at the front wondering what had happened to Tucker who wasn’t to be seen again. Keem eventually stamped his authority on the race taking the lead at about the 6km mark and pulling away from Wegner who eventually faded further into third position with Mustapha Takieddine taking out 2^nd place. Keem finished with a time of 27.19.

The womens section was won by Sydney’s Eliza Stewart in a smart time of 31.08 followed by Melbournes Amy Mills who ran 32.51 and Lauren Mitchell in third with 33.02.

All competitors then made their way up to the NAB Recovery Village to take in the atmosphere and enjoy the sponsor giveaways, entertainment and fun activities