admin Coronavirus is spreading at a hasty rate and throughout the world, many events are being cancelled for the fear of it spreading any further. We have seen it affecting the Mobile World Conference which was to be held in Barcelona. And the latest and the biggest event it affected was the Tokyo Marathon.
Almost 38 thousand runners were supposed to participate in this international event. But due to fear of the deadly coronavirus, most runners aren’t allowed to run in the event. Only the pro athletes are allowed to engage in the event. The estimations predict that only around 200 people are allowed to run through this event.
Japan is trailing behind China in the number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus as it has over 500 patients infected by the virus. China now has over 70,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus since its outbreak in December last year. Most of these cases are from the Wuhan district of Hubei province.
Organizers the unpleasant news on Monday where they declared that only elite athletes can take part in the event. The Marathon also acts as the qualifier for Tokyo Olympics and it continues to be so.
“We cannot continue to launch the event within the scale we originally anticipated. The Tokyo Marathon 2020 will be held only for the marathon elites and the wheelchair elites,” a statement on the race website reads.
This is just the second occasion on which a marathon event got cancelled. In 2012, the New York City Marathon was called-off as Hurricane Sandy destroyed everything.
Tokyo marathon is one of the Six Marathon Majors of the world and this is the biggest marathon event in Asia. Clearly, Monday’s announcement was a big deal for the organizers. “Following the decision of the race organizers to cancel the mass participation element of the 2020 Tokyo Marathon, one of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, we are assisting in the communication of the relevant information to participants who are on their Six Star journey,” said Tim Hadzima, executive director of the Abbott World Marathon Majors.
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