Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

Organisers of the World Half marathon race have announced that this year’s elite-only event will go ahead as planned on October 17.

The organisers have, however, announced that the planned mass participation race that was to be part of the elite championships has been cancelled due to coronavirus-19-related health and safety restrictions.

A record number of more than 27,000 amateur runners had registered to compete on the streets of Gdynia.

Instead they will be offered the opportunity to join a virtual competition with the goal of participating in the world’s largest individual half marathon. 

“Surely, that’s not how we imagined the outcome of three years of preparations to this event,” said Michal Drelich, head of the LOC.

He added: “I would like to thank the entire team and our partners from World Athletics and the host city of Gdynia for their incredible effort to develop alternative event formats, race courses and new procedures that were supposed to make both the elite run and the mass race happen in the safest possible way, with massively enhanced social distance and minimised touch points between athletes, staff and volunteers.

Since the beginning of March, when the event was postponed from 29

March to 17 October, intensive discussions and efforts have been made to find a solution that would enable the Local Organising Committee to hold the event in its original format, featuring both the championships race and the record-breaking mass race.”