Organiser links with Dispossessed Fund to boost entries from four host boroughs

THE greatest marathon in the world is too white and middle-class and needs to evolve to reflect the ethnic and social diversity of London, the organisers of the London Marathon said today.

Hugh Brasher, event director of London Marathon Events, revealed to the Evening Standard that a new race will be held next year to begin to change the demographic.

A half-marathon scheduled for the first Sunday of March 2018 — called The Big Half — will seek to transform the face of the London Marathon over the next five years and will partner with the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund and the sports development charity Sported to foster new running communities.

Mr Brasher said: “Our aim is to inspire hard-to-reach groups to get involved and to create new running communities so that the demographics (currently just 16 per cent black and minority ethnic) mirror the demographic of London (37 per cent BME).

“This is an ambitious goal but we believe that by working with the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund and Sported, we can achieve this within five to 10 years.”

Mr Brasher was inspired, he said, by his father Chris’s vision of “the mara- thon as melting pot” when he visited the New York race in 1979 and launched the London Marathon back in 1981, but also more recently by Mayor Sadiq Khan. “I was listening to the Mayor talk about his vision of London being for all Londoners and that gave me the idea,” he said. “When the London Marathon started, it was for stick thin, skinny white men. Since then, female finishers have gone from a risible five per cent to