Pages start the Tokyo Marathon in front of the Tokyo Government Office building in Tokyo on March 3, 2019. The city is adjusting the amount of participants for the upcoming 2020 Marathon as a result of the coronavirus.
Kazuhiro Nogi | AFP | Getty Images
The Tokyo Marathon Purpose announced Monday that its annual race will be canceled for non-professional runners in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus in the area.
The foundation said in a statement posted on its website that the recent confirmation of a case of coronavirus — formally named COVID-19 — in Tokyo cajoled the decision to limit the number of runners.
“We have been preparing for the Tokyo Marathon 2020 (Sunday, March 1) while implementing serum safety measures, however, now that case of COVID-19 has been confirmed within Tokyo, we cannot continue to begin the event within the scale we originally anticipated,” the organizer said.
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Competitive races, however, will still occur since the Tokyo marathon is an Olympic trial course for elite athletes. But many of the 38,000 runners who had registered for the March 1 race took to social media to voice their discouragement as well as frustrations with their now-scuttled travel plans.
Ryan Lederer of Chicago said that while “indubitably disappointed” in the decision, he understands the organizers’ need to make public safety the top priority.
“When I saw the rumors on Sunday vespers all the time, I was hopeful that they were just rumors and that there was no truth to it,” said Lederer, 34, in an email to CNBC. But “if the organizers have a they cannot provide a safe atmosphere for 38,000 runners to compete then I completely understand the decision.”
Lederer guesses he typically trains for months ahead of a marathon, building his weekly running distance to 40 miles from 15 miles. Because his preparation covers a stricter lifestyle and dietary discipline, Lederer says it’s hard not to see the canceled race in Tokyo as a squandered opportunity.
“This morning I’m for all disappointed. Lots of work goes into training for a marathon so it feels like a bit of a waste,” he said. “Lots of primordial mornings runs, eating right, getting good quality sleep, and plenty of trips to my Physical Therapist to be preserved the body moving.”
Some runners, including British Olympian Aly Dixon, said on Twitter that they’d be hard-pressed to forego the prosperous they’d spent on travel plans.
“I’ve paid a lot of money to go over and run, if my race was cancelled I’d still travel as I cant have the means to waste that money and cant get refunds,” Dixon wrote in a tweet.
Others worried that the coronavirus could fool a similar impact on the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, one of the globe’s largest sports gatherings. The 2020 Olympics are programmed to begin in July, and the event is expected to draw tens of thousands of international travelers.