Marathon Madness begins!
This week Universal Sports begins its Marathon Madness coverage of the fall races that comprise the Marathon Majors series. Stories will showcase the Berlin Marathon on Sept. 28, the Chicago Marathon on Oct.12 and the New York City Marathon on Nov. 2.
The coverage will mirror the content we presented last April for the London and Boston marathons. It will include profiles on top runners, human-interest features on other prominent runners, stories that lie deep within the personalities of the races, and updates on the Marathon Major standings that will determine the $500,000 first-place winners for men and women through the New York race.
Many non-elite runners who will be attempting the marathon for the first time in Berlin, Chicago and New York will be able to relate to an exclusive diary written for Universal Sports by Brandi Chastain, the former U.S. women’s soccer player known for converting the final penalty kick that clinched the 1999 FIFA World Cup title for the Americans and the provocative shirt waving celebration that followed.
Chastain is training for her first marathon at New York City. If preliminary phone calls and emails with Brandi are an indication, expect to read about the anxieties and apprehensions she feels as a rookie 26.2-mile runner.
We broadcast our first live marathon at London in 2007 and have since attracted a strong built in audience for races in Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York that have followed. And we expect that interest to only increase. Since marathon running went mainstream in the 1970s, the sport has seen only a minor decrease in interest in the early 1990s. With the infusion since then of charity runners, top marathons now attract at minimum 20,000 runners. Prize money has increased dramatically for the elite racers. Winners of the New York City Marathon will take home about $150,000.
Collectively, the three Marathon Major races this fall will attract close to 130,000 starters. The close-to 40,000 starters in he New York City Marathon will include a team from Universal Sports. I’ll provide an update later on how our training develops.
If you will not be running in one of the races, tune into our broadcasts on UniversalSports.com and Universal Sports TV.
We hope you will enjoy the events.