News

The organisers of the 28th real,- BERLIN-MARATHON have chosen the slogan

“RUN FOR PEACE” for this year’s event as a sign of their

feelings about the present world political situation.

At the time of announcing the decision to continue with the staging of the

event, with over 37,000 participants from 85 countries, athletes were also

requested to donate to a fund for the dependents of those New York fire

fighters and police who lost their lives in the recent tragic events, and to

wear a mourning band on their arm. This run is going to be a run for peace, a

peaceful demonstration against the terrorist attack. Our reaction is in line

with that of the organisers of the big US marathons in Chicago, (7th October)

and New York (4th November), whose events are also to be similar

demonstrations.

The 28th real,- BERLIN-MARATHON 2001 on the Internet In 1997, the real,-

BERLIN-MARATHON started to present information world-wide about the event,

during the actual running of the race, through its web-site

www.berlin-marathon.com. The 2001 race will see the most comprehensive

live on-line presentation of the real,- BERLIN-MARATHON so far. For

participants, retrieval of the results to be made available immediately after

the race will obviously be the most important service. Within a few minutes of

the close of the finish line, runners will be able to obtain their provisional

result and a diploma via the Internet. This year, for the first time, several

results servers will be used to meet the demand of those accessing the service,

allowing load distribution.

The real,- BERLIN-MARATHON’s official net partner, Comline AG, will

provide and maintain the main web server – www.berlin-marathon.com

– and deal with network connections.

Another service, inaugurated in 2000, is the SMS results service.

Participants can register up to three mobile telephone numbers to which a

message including the runner’s provisional placing, time, and other

details, will be transmitted immediately. While in 2000 a total of 10,705

messages were sent out to runners, it is expected that this year it will be as

many as 30,000 messages. The messages are, as a rule, sent within 3 seconds of

a runner crossing the finishing line. Three webcams placed at the finishing

line and along the approach to the finish will transmit live pictures through

the internet during the event.

At the same time, in cooperation with the ARD and SFB, a live stream showing

the television images being broadcast nationally will be available on the

web.

As part of the run-up to the 28th real,- BERLIN-MARATHON, a mobile event

guide for palmtops was developed in co-operation with the Mercuryguide company.

Participants can download the Berlin City Guide including restaurant

information, as well as all the important information about the real,-

BERLIN-MARATHON, from www.berlin-marathon.com. The guide can also be downloaded

into personal palmtops from so called “Beaming Stations” at the

marathon exhi-bition which runs from 27th to 29th September in the

Messehallen.

Internet online registration for the 28th real-, BERLIN MARATHON 2001 has

been a big success. There were some 13,747 online registrations – about

40% of a total of over 37,000 en-tries. The real,- BERLIN MARATHON’s web

pages, which feature not only all there is to know about the real,-BERLIN

MARATHON, but also information about SCC Berlin’s other running events

and plenty of interesting news for runners, are already showing high levels of

visits. So far the organisers of the biggest German Marathon have registered

over 3.6 million page hits from 572,000 visitors to their internet pages.There

has been a web forum at forum.berlin-marathon.com where runners can swap

bibs, ask the organisers questions, or get in touch with other participants. By

the end of August 2001, the forum had already counted 180,000 page hits from

21,000 visitors.