Beijing marathoners don face masks to battle smog

BEIJING — Despite heavy pollution blanketing Beijing on Sunday, an international marathon went ahead, with face masks and sponges among the equipment used by competitors to battle the smog.

The 34th Beijing International Marathon began at Tiananmen Square with many of the tens of thousands of participants wearing face masks. The 42-kilometer (26-mile) course ended at the Chinese capital’s Olympic Park, on a day when buildings across the city disappeared into the gray-tinged mist.

“Actually, on a normal day, nobody would run in such conditions,” said participant Liu Zhenyu, a computer engineer. “But the event is happening today, so what can we do?”

About 30,000 people were expected to take part in the marathon and the half-marathon. The organizing committee made 140,000 sponges available at supply stations along the marathon route so runners could “clean their skin that is exposed to the air,” the Beijing News reported.

The men’s and women’s marathon winners were both from Ethiopia. Girmay Birhanu Gebru won the men’s race in 2 hours, 10 minutes, 42 seconds, while Fatuma Sado Dergo won the women’s in 2:30:3.

“Today the smog did have a little impact on my performance, but not a major one,” said China’s Gong Lihua, who came in third in the women’s race.

An update Saturday night on the official microblog of the marathon, which was hosted by the Chinese Athletic Association and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports, said “there might be slight or mod- erate smog.” It asked competitors to take measures according to their own health, and advised the elderly and people with respiratory diseases to carefully consider whether to participate.

But the air Sunday was deemed severely polluted, according to the real-time monitoring of Beijing’s environmental center. It was the most serious level on China’s air quality index, and came with a warning for children, the elderly and the sick to stay indoors, and for everyone to avoid outdoor activities.