© Copyright – 2022 – Athletics Illustrated
As the door was closing for athletes (of all abilities) to register for the 2023 TCS London Marathon — to see if they were accepted, the traffic was so high that the website crashed.
The ballot for the 2023 edition, which is returning to its traditional date in late April, closed in early October. Runners were required to sign up to be in the lottery.
All entrants were sent email messages from organizers on Oct. 24 with the click-through to the London Marathon website.
They did so en-masse and apparently crashed the website. London is, after all, the most popular marathon in the world. It is apparently the largest fundraiser for charity in the world too.
London organizers published the following message on social media:
“We are aware of an issue that means some of you can’t currently access your ballot results. We’re working on a fix and will update you as soon as we can. For the moment please wait until we have provided an update before trying to click through to your results. Apologies, TCSLM.”
We are aware of an issue that means some of you can’t currently access your ballot results. We’re working on a fix and will update you as soon as we can. For the moment please wait until we have provided an update before trying to click through to your results.
— TCS London Marathon (@LondonMarathon) October 24, 2022
Apologies, TCSLM
However, it is the New York Marathon that can boast the most starters for a marathon-length event at 53,121 in 2018. Paris 2019 has the second most at 49,155. Vienna at 42,657 in 2015 had the third most. London with 42,906 in 2019 was the top London marathon. The registrants number much greater than the starters. Not all finish either.
The London Marathon does apparently have the most people applying to run it each year with a high of (not including 2023) 457,861 for 2020. For 2019, London had 414,168 applications and 56,398 were accepted, 42,906 started the marathon and 42,549 finished.
In the first year of the London Marathon in 1981, there was an estimated 20,000 applications, where 7,747 were accepted and 7,055 runners started the race, and 6,255 finished it.
The city of London has a long history of marathon running starting with the Polytechnic Marathon which began in 1909. The year prior was the first time that a marathon was run over the 42.195 kilometre distance, which became the standard. The original length was planned to be 25 miles or 40 kilometres or to be precise 40.233 kilometres.
