Berlin and its marathon will be part of the world sports heritage from this Wednesday. This is how the awarding of the Heritage Plaque to the Governing Mayor Kai Wegner, which is carried out by the world athletics association World Athletics in the Red Town Hall, is to be understood. The plaque is awarded “in recognition of the outstanding contribution to the development of international athletics,” says World Athletics President Sebastian Coe, according to a previously published video. In doing so, he honors more than 130 years of athletics and running events in Berlin – and in doing so nonchalantly ignores the city’s claim to be recognized as the place where the world association was founded in 1913.
After all, Coe points out that Berlin is one of only nine cities to have hosted both the Summer Olympics and the World Athletics Championships. The main roles were played by sprint stars Jesse Owens and Usain Bolt, one who won four gold medals in 1936, the other as a three-time world champion in 2009; Bolt’s 100 and 200 meter world records of 9.58 and 19.19 seconds still stand today.
But the Berlin Marathon is at the epicenter of the city’s sporting history, says Coe and praises Horst Milde, who was 85 years old last week, the founder of the run and race director for the first three decades. The impact of the event, which was held for the first time in 1974 in Grunewald along the Avus and which will take place for the fiftieth time next year, can hardly be overestimated. Milde made it the annual highlight of a series of Berlin Volksrun or Everyman Runs, to which participants without club membership were admitted for the first time.
Stefanie Sippel, Berlin Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 15 Michael Reinsch, Berlin Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 5 Achim Dreis Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 23
This has become a festival of sport that always takes over the streets of the city on the last weekend in September. With 13 world records in its history, with around 50,000 participants and a million spectators, with a turnover of around 20 million euros, the Berlin marathon, like those in London, New York, Tokyo, Boston and Chicago, is one of the largest and most important in the world .
Milde and the marathon revolutionized the world of sports, brought elite sport to the public and gave the most enthusiastic the opportunity to stay on the heels of the fastest in the world in the same race – more or less closely.
