Even better marathon this year, claim organisers

Though the eight edition of Mumbai Marathon has been faced by issues such as objections from Traffic police, financial issues with BMC and no support from the Athletics federation of India (AFI) the event would not suffer and would be more successful than previous years claim the organizers.

One of the crucial changes in this year's marathon is an early start by around 30 minutes that would be a boon for the full marathon running athletes. " One of the main reason for this changes is we want the athletes to finish maximum part of the race before the temperature becomes hot and humid" said Vivek Singh, Joint Managing Director, Procam International.

The AFI had been associated with the event since the beginning but backed out this year. Earlier Mumbai Traffic police had also objected to the route of the Marathon claiming it would disrupt traffic but later on they had given a green signal to the original route as it was too late to change the route.

The organizers have made sure that serious runners should get a fair chance to participate and hence medical certificates and previous participation experience certificates in such events was a must before registering in for this event. " Marathon is becoming like a culture and therefore all the entries were full within six days of opening dates of acceptance of participation forms" said Singh.

Half Marathon would be starting from Bandra and end at CST while the rest would start from CST and end at the same venue, barring the Senior Citizens and Dream run which would terminate opposite Metro cinema.

The celebrities that would be participating in this year's event are Juhi Chawla, Suzane Khan, Sushmita Sen who would be participating for the first time and some of the celebrities who are regular runners at the Marathon are Anil Ambani, Milind Soman Rahul Bose, Gul Panag, Tara Sharma and brand ambassador John Abraham. Around 38,430 participants would be running in Marathon 2011.