Chris Brasher

person · earth · Greater London

British athlete, journalist and co-founder of the London Marathon. Brasher ran the New York City Marathon in 1979, wrote about it in The Observer as the greatest folk festival the world has seen, and with John Disley built a London race on that model, first run on 29 March 1981. His role is the clearest single piece of evidence that the mass-participation marathon was transmitted deliberately between cities rather than emerging independently: London is a copy of New York, made by someone who went to look.