2012 Olympic Marathon Course

The Mall will form part of the course of the 2012 Olympic Marathon

The 2012 Olympic Marathon Course will be used for both the men's and women's marathon races at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The course will circuit much of central London, starting and finishing in the Mall.

Original route description

The original plan was that the route would start at Tower Bridge, before heading to a finish at the Olympic Stadium.

Commencing from Tower Bridge, the route was planned to circuit central London three times. Each circuit would have passed by or through the Tower of London, the Victoria Embankment, the Palace of Westminster, Parliament Square, Westminster Abbey, Birdcage Walk, Green Park, Buckingham Palace, the Mall, Trafalgar Square, the Strand, St Paul's Cathedral, and the City of London. After the final circuit, the route would then have headed east, along Whitechapel Road and Mile End Road, towards the Olympic Park and a finish in the Olympic Stadium.

Changes to the route

In September 2010 various newspapers published reports that the London Organising Committee were considering alternative routes for the 2012 Olympic Marathon as the original route would not be "Television-friendly" in London's East-end. Various alternative routes were being proposed including one that ended outside Buckingham Palace rather than the Olympic Stadium. A final decision was due to be made in October 2010. The route shown in The London Evening Standard follows most of the "circular" part of the originally planned route four times instead of three as was originally proposed. It was proposed that the section from Trafalgar Square to St Paul's Cathedral be rerouted to the Victoria Embankment (past Cleopatra's Needle) which would then be bi-directional. The article also states that the proposal is to run the course in an anti-clockwise direction, rather than clockwise as was originally proposed.

Since the length of the marathon route is 42.195 km, each lap would have had to be between 10.6 km and 11.0 km to keep the start and the finish close to each other (as is shown on the map in The London Evening Standard). Each lap of the then proposed route would have been 11.610 km.

The route finally announced in October 2010 will start in The Mall, about 100 m from the Victoria Memorial and will have four laps, finishing half-way along The Mall. Much of the route will be within the narrow streets of the City of London passing a number of landmarks there including St Paul's Cathedral, The Guildhall and even passing through Leadenhall Market. The first lap will be 3.571 km in length and the other three will be 12.875 km in length.

London Marathon comparison

Since the annual London Marathon ends in the Mall while the Olympic Marathon traditionally ends in the Olympic stadium, the Olympic course would not have been the one that is currently used for the annual London Marathon. However the section along the Victoria Embankment and as far as the Mall duplicates the finishing stretch of the London Marathon.

Although the revised Olympic route finishes in the Mall, it still differs from the London Marathon course which starts in Greenwich. Since the logistical problems behind the design of the London Marathon course (35,000 runners of mixed ability) are very different to those behind the design of the London Olympic Marathon course (100 top-class runners) it is highly unlikely that the London Marathon will be moved to follow the Olympic route, which happened in Atlanta, where from 1997-2009, the Atlanta Marathon followed the majority of the Olympic route except for the start and finish, which was located in the car park of the stadium, which had been converted to baseball use.

External links

• "London Olympic Games 2012 Marathon Route". Official site of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. http://www.london2012.com/documents/general/london-2012-marathon-route-map.pdf. Retrieved January 12, 2012.