The race distance was nearly 700 metres too long, a mistake so great that the results can't be used to qualify for the Boston Marathon
Edmonton, as occasionally happens, became a laughingstock of the world last week. Normally I would pause here to flip a coin and decide whether to defend or prosecute, but I’m afraid this is a hopeless case. On Sunday the city closed Jasper Avenue and other important streets — roads already badly strangled by ill-planned summertime construction — for the annual Edmonton Marathon. The event is an important late-season opportunity for ambitious runners to record qualifying times for major international events, particularly the springtime Boston Marathon, and it incorporated a half-marathon that doubled as the Canadian national championship for that distance. What could go wrong?
The answer is “math.” Ain’t it always? As soon as the race was over, elite competitors began complaining that the course definitely seemed a touch too long given their race time and effort. Experienced local observers noticed that top times were, indeed, unexpectedly slow. Dozens of amateurs with GPS-equipped watches echoed those complaints, showing that their devices indicated both the full race distance and the half-marathon course to be anywhere from a half-kilometre to a kilometre too long. Some people who didn’t even run the race turned to Google Maps, plotted the half-marathon course, and found that it seemed to be about 700 metres longer than the correct 21.1 km.
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The immediate response from the race organizers and Athletics Canada amounted to “Don’t you imbeciles think we measure the course? Of course we measure the course! Our course measurer is one of the best course measurers there is!” Etc., etc. But Rory Linkletter, a Calgarian who had just won the men’s half-marathon, refused to be gaslit. As Linkletter argued on social media, it was easy to see what had gone wrong if you had run in the 2025 version of the Edmonton half. (He had won that one too.)
Nobody hitherto writing about this has bothered to exhibit or link to the actual map of the course, so it’s the least we can do for readers who have been wondering whether some non-Euclidian quirk of Edmontonian geography is involved. The issue is that participants in the half-marathon, which goes from the Convention Centre around a bend of the North Saskatchewan River and doubles back, would normally run straight across the old Wellington Bridge on 102 Ave. (On the map that’s the northernmost part of the route.)
That bridge, which crosses a big ravine, is now about halfway through demolition and replacement. So in this year’s race there was a new detour through the posh Glenora neighbourhood, adding — by Linkletter’s math — an extra 680 or so metres to the course.
The organizers’ correction for this was simple. The course for the half-marathon went from point A (the Convention Centre) to point B (a suitable spot in the western river valley) and back to A. (Competitors in the full marathon then continued eastward to C, in the east, and again back to A.) So they scooched the 2025 turnaround point B backward so that it was about 330 or 340 metres closer to point A, saving runners the 680 or so extra metres imposed by the detour.
And they just plain forgot that those runners would be taking the detour again on the way back.
Within hours of being shamed by the winner of their own race, organizers were forced to issue an “updated statement” withdrawing claims that critics were all mistaken or insane and confessing that the race distance had in fact been 674.4 metres too long. (The meticulous inclusion of that extra 40 centimetres is a nice touch, ain’t it.) Unfortunately, the update is arguably uglier than the original denials, which, race director Tom Keogh says, were “issued with the best information” available at the time. A “detailed review” apparently arrived at the same findings others reached by glancing at Google Maps. “The event owns this error, and we take full responsibility,” Keogh added, not at all suggesting that anyone might have to step aside from a job.
The Updated Statement says that Athletics Canada and Keogh are trying to figure out how results of the mismeasured marathon “can be recognized,” but the association that runs the Boston Marathon has already announced that they can’t be and won’t be. Plenty of competitors lost chances at personal bests or even national records, having been told in the meantime that their GPS watches and their brains must have been on the fritz. Corporate sponsors of the race must be wondering at least a little about public confidence in their own accounting. Some runners are muttering that they will think twice before returning to Edmonton, despite the attractive course and the friendly volunteers. Others, as a balm to their injured spirits and tissues, are congratulating each other on accidentally becoming ultramarathoners.
National Post
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