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Portrait of The Marathon

General knowledge · Sport

The Marathon

1896 (first modern race); distance fixed at 26 miles 385 yards in 1921

Sport — athletics

A long-distance foot race of 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km), named after the plain in Attica where the Athenians defeated the Persians in 490 BC and after the legendary run of Pheidippides to Athens with the news. Devised for the first modern Olympics in 1896, it now anchors both the Olympic athletics programme and a global circuit of city races, of which the Abbott World Majors are the most prestigious.

How to spot them

  • ▸26 miles 385 yards, or 42.195 kilometres
  • ▸Named after a battle of 490 BC and a messenger's run to Athens
  • ▸The odd extra distance comes from a royal start at Windsor in 1908
  • ▸Abbott World Majors: Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York, Sydney

Key facts

Twenty-six miles and 385 yards, or 42.195 kilometres (1921)

Standardised by the IAAF in 1921, taking the 1908 London Olympic course as its model

Named after a plain in Attica where the Persians were defeated in 490 BC (490 BC)

Legend has the messenger Pheidippides running to Athens with news of the victory and dying on arrival; the story is not in Herodotus

Spyridon Louis, a Greek water-carrier, won the first modern one in 1896 (1896)

He ran from the plain to the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, to national rejoicing

The extra 385 yards were added in 1908 so that the race could start at Windsor Castle and finish before the royal box (1908)

The London Olympic course; Dorando Pietri was helped over the line and disqualified

Seven Abbott World Majors: Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York and Sydney

Sydney became the seventh in 2025; Cape Town is due to join as the eighth in 2027

Sabastian Sawe ran 1:59:30 in London in April 2026, the first record-legal sub-two-hour run (2026)

Eliud Kipchoge had run 1:59:40 in Vienna in 2019, but in an exhibition with pacing and drinks arrangements that made it ineligible for ratification

Quick-fire facts

  • •The distance was not fixed at first: Olympic races between 1896 and 1920 ranged from about 24 to 26.5 miles
  • •26 miles 385 yards was adopted as the standard in 1921 and is 42.195 km
  • •Dorando Pietri of Italy entered the stadium first in 1908, collapsed repeatedly and was helped over the line; he was disqualified but given a special gold cup by Queen Alexandra
  • •The women's Olympic marathon was only added in 1984, at Los Angeles, and was won by Joan Benoit of the United States
  • •Abebe Bikila won in Rome in 1960 running barefoot, and won again in Tokyo in 1964
  • •The men's world record is 1:59:30 by Sabastian Sawe of Kenya, set at the London Marathon on 26 April 2026
  • •The women's world record in a mixed race is 2:09:56 by Ruth Chepngetich, Chicago 2024; the women-only record is 2:15:41 by Tigst Assefa, London 2026
  • •The Boston Marathon, first run in 1897, is the oldest annual marathon in the world
  • •Since 2004 the Olympic race has finished several times on historic ground: the 2004 Athens course ran from the town of Marathon itself to the Panathenaic Stadium

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Sources