London Marathon

Assembled from 46 blocks · 3 evidence · 65 related

1. Story
2. Founded by the athletes Chris Brasher and John Disley and first run on 29 March 1981, from Greenwich in the south-east across the Thames at Tower Bridge, out through the Isle of Dogs and back along the Embankment to a finish on The Mall. The first race drew about 20,000 applications, accepted 7,747, and ended in a deliberate dead heat between Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen on Constitution Hill, with 6,255 finishers. The course is flat, near sea level and heavily attended, and is one of the fastest in the world; it is also the race that most explicitly built the charity-fundraising and ballot model that mass marathons now use everywhere. On 26 April 2026 it became the first course on which a marathon was run under two hours in a record-eligible race, when Sabastian Sawe won in 1:59:30, and Tigst Assefa set a women-only world record of 2:15:41 on the same day.
3. Knowledge
4. London
5. London Marathon
6. Abbott World Marathon Majors
7. Chris Brasher
8. Connections
9. Chris Brasher
10. London
11. Abbott World Marathon Majors
12. New York City Marathon
13. The first London Marathon
14. The World Marathon Majors series is announced
15. Tigst Assefa sets a women-only world record in London
16. The first sub-two-hour marathon in a record-eligible race
17. London Marathon
18. The first London Marathon
19. Tea
20. Afternoon tea
21. Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
22. Boston Tea Party
23. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
24. First Assam tea auctioned in London
25. London Marathon
26. New York City
27. White City Stadium
28. The 1908 Olympic marathon fixes 26 miles 385 yards
29. The first London Marathon
30. The Great Exhibition
31. Google DeepMind
32. Boston Marathon
33. London Marathon
34. Berlin Marathon
35. Chicago Marathon
36. New York City Marathon
37. Tokyo Marathon
38. The World Marathon Majors series is announced
39. Tokyo becomes the sixth Major
40. Sydney runs its first race as the seventh Major
41. Cape Town is confirmed as the eighth Major
42. Cape Town scheduled to run as a Major
43. Evidence
44. The London Marathon was founded by Chris Brasher and John Disley after Brasher ran New York in 1979; the first race on 29 March 1981 accepted 7,747 of about 20,000 applicants, had 6,255 finishers, and ended in a dead heat between Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen. V55 verification basis: read through an attributed search summary. Note that the URL carries a former sponsor name and may redirect; a curator should replace it with the current organiser URL.
45. On 26 April 2026 Sabastian Sawe won the London Marathon in 1:59:30, the first sub-two-hour performance in a record-eligible marathon, ahead of Yomif Kejelcha in 1:59:41; Tigst Assefa ran 2:15:41 for a women-only world record; the race reported 59,830 finishers. V55 verification basis: three independent race reports were retrieved in summary and agree on the times; no World Athletics ratification notice was found, so the marks are reported as run, not as ratified.
46. Tigst Assefa ran 2:15:50 in London for a women-only marathon world record, and her 2:11:53 from Berlin 2023 stood as the second-fastest women's marathon behind Ruth Chepngetich's 2:09:56. V55 verification basis: worldathletics.org was refused by this session's egress proxy; read only through an attributed search summary. The exact 2025 race date was not captured.