SOUTH AFRICA: Cape Town Marathon held its two-day running event on Saturday and Sunday, becoming the first major marathon in South Africa since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is Africa’s only World Athletics Gold Label marathon. In August, World Marathon Majors (WMM) announced that the competition has officially been confirmed as WMM’s first candidate race in Africa.
The Cape Town Marathon will be required to meet certain criteria for three years from 2022 before joining an elite group of races — Tokyo Marathon, Boston Marathon, London Marathon, Berlin Marathon, Chicago Marathon and New York City Marathon — as a new WMM member in 2025.
About 10,000 participants joined the race on Sunday, where they ran past attractions including the statue of former South African President Nelson Mandela standing at a balcony of the city hall, where the Nobel Peace Prize laureate made a speech after he was released from prison in 1990.