The organisers of the annual Access Bank Lagos City Marathon on Wednesday said that the hosting of the 42km race in 2021 was not under threat yet, in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Media Officer of the race, Kayode Thomas, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
Thomas said he was optimistic that the race which achieved a silver label this year, would not be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic which had limited a number of sport events worldwide.
“Next year’s marathon will go ahead as planned. It is true that some marathons across the world have been cancelled but some are going on as planned just like Hamburg in Germany.
“The Hamburg Marathon is one of the biggest in the world and it is coming up in September as planned but because of restrictions in Germany, the organisers have scaled down the number of participants.
“The number of runners for the race have been scaled down to 10,000 runners but as the case is, Nigeria is better off in terms of COVID-19 pandemic compared to Germany in terms of outbreak.
“What the organisers have put in place in Germany is social distancing and other protocols and also modifying the race in so many ways but the race will go on as planned,” he said.
Thomas said that nothing would stop the planned 2021 edition of the marathon but that the race could be modified to accommodate the fallouts from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I don’t see anything stopping the 2021 Access Bank Lagos City Marathon, may be there could be some adjustments.
“We have a Technical Director in person of Yusuf Alli who is conversant with the development of races all over the world; so the technical department might also be in Hamburg.
“They will also visit other races to observe what they are doing, I am yet to envisage any problem with Nigeria’s race.
“We should not forget that football has resumed across the Europe but with some adjustments. I think we will also follow same protocol for the 2021 marathon as well,” he said. (NAN)
