Amateur Runners
The race attracts amateur runners who make up the bulk of the thirty thousand or more participants; commonly running in fancy dress for charity causes. In 2002, Lloyd Scott completed the marathon wearing a deep sea diving suit that weighed a total of 110 lb (50 kg), with each shoe weighing 24 lb (11 kg); he also set a record for the slowest London Marathon time. On 19 April 2003, former boxer Michael Watson, who had been told he would never be able to walk again after a fight with Chris Eubank, made headlines by finishing the marathon in six days. In 2006, Sir Steve Redgrave (winner of five consecutive Olympic gold medals) set a new Guinness World Record for money raised through a marathon by collecting £1.8 million in sponsorship. This broke the record set the previous year by the founder of the Oasis Trust, Steve Chalke MBE, who had collected over £1.25 million. Steve Chalke recovered the record in 2007, raising £1.86 million. In 2011 Chalke broke the record for a third time, raising a staggering £2.32 million. The sum of £500 that Claire Squires collected before the race swelled to £920,000 after she died having collapsed during the 2012 race.
A small number of runners, known as the "Ever Presents", have completed each of the London Marathons since 1981. After 2012 their number has shrunk to 16. At the running of the 2012 event the oldest runners amongst them were Kenneth Jones and Jeffrey Gordon, both 78 years old, whilst the youngest runner is 53-year-old ultra-runner and father of 3 Chris Finill. They are all male.
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Famous quotes containing the words amateur and/or runners:
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
“Why runners make lousy communists. In a word, individuality. It’s the one characteristic all runners, as different as they are, seem to share.... Stick with it. Push yourself. Keep running. And you’ll never lose that wonderful sense of individuality you now enjoy. Right, comrade?”
—quoted in Guardian (London, Dec. 29, 1984)