NAIROBI, September 25 – This year’s Standard Charted Nairobi marathon on Thursday received cheques totalling Sh29.1 million from co sponsors.
Capital Fm gave Sh6.5 million, Hilton hotel gave Sh6.99 million and Majestic printing gave Sh4.5 million while Kenya Data Network gave Sh4 million.Capital Fm gave Sh6.5 million, Hilton Sh6.99 million and Majestic printing Sh4.5 million while Kenya Data Network gave Sh4 million.
Other corporates that presented cheques include Multichoice Kenya (Sh1.5 million), Jubilee Insurance (Sh2.5 million) and AAR (Sh1 million).
Speaking at the function, Athletics Kenya treasurer Joseph Kinyua said that the marathon has potential to attain World status.
"Going by the way the marathon has grown since it began in 2003, it can reach the status of the big city marathons like New York and Boston in the next three years if the growth continues apace,” he said.
Meanwhile over 120 Greatest Run on Earth athletes have already registered for this year’s race. The Nairobi leg is the opening round of the four race GROE series with up to $1 million up for grabs.
Kenya will this year enter only one set of teams as opposed to last year when they entered two teams in both and men and women.
“Last year we had two teams in both men and women and they swept all the top prizes so this year they have decided that Kenya will have only one team for each for men and women,” said Kinyua.
The organisers have set a target of 15,000 athletes for this year event which is slated for October 26.
This year’s race will be run on a new route with the full marathon start at Nyayo stadium, down Uhuru Highway before turning at the University way round about into Kenyatta Avenue, Harambee Avenue and Haile Selassie Avenue before moving to Mombasa road and will finish inside the stadium.
The theme for this year’s marathon is Hesabika; which encourages people to give someone the power of sight and which wants to build on what we have achieved in the past five years especially through our Seeing is Believing initiative.
In addition to the full marathon, there will be the half marathon, the 10k race, corporate team race in both 10 and 21k and the family fun run.
Registration for the full marathon and half marathon is Sh1,000 while the corporate teams will fork out Sh50,000 to register. Family fun run participants will pay Sh500.
The male and female winners of the full marathon will each take home 1.5 million.
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