Some 30 elite athletes, including the Spanish, Javi Guerra, Yago Rojo and Clara Simal, will seek to achieve great marks
MADRID, 24 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Nearly 19,000 runners will compete this Sunday in the twenty-second edition of the Movistar Madrid Half Marathon and the seventh ProFuturo Race, starting at Paseo de la Castellana and finishing at Paseo de Recoletos, the organizers announced this Friday at their official presentation.
At 9 a.m. the ProFuturo Race will start, 5.8 kilometers long, a solidarity test for education promoted by the Telefónica and ‘la Caixa’ foundations, while the Movistar Madrid Half Marathon will start 15 minutes later (9: fifteen).
17 percent of the runners will be foreigners from 90 nationalities and almost 30 percent come this weekend from outside the Community of Madrid. In addition, female participation will be 23% of the total registered.
This edition will also be the most inclusive in its history with some 70 runners with some type of functional, physical or intellectual diversity, and the collection of bib numbers will take place at the Runner’s Expo, in the Casa de Campo Convention Pavilion .
The presentation ceremony was attended by Sofía Miranda, head of the Sports Delegate Area of the Madrid City Council; Rocío Rey Marín, manager of Telefónica Sponsorships; Magdalena Brier, general director of ProFuturo; Raúl Chapado, president of the Spanish Athletics Federation; Eduardo Ajuria, president of the Marathon Sports Association; and Isidro Arranz, president of the Madrid Athletics Federation; former athletes Ruth Beitia and Abel Antón as ambassadors for Joma Sport, and Marina López, CEO of Joma Sport.
Also in attendance were the Spanish athletes Yago Rojo and Clara Simal, and the Africans Hillary Kipkoech and Tadese Takele, favorites for victory in the men’s category, and Sharon Kemboi and Alemitu Tariku, in the women’s category, along with Carmen Giménez, who will participate in the category wheelchair, representing the Run For You club that supports athletes with functional diversity.
Paralympic athlete Lorenzo Albaladejo, considered the best athlete with cerebral palsy in the history of Spain in sprint events, also attended the presentation and will participate in the ProFuturo Race on Sunday.
AN ‘AFRICAN ARMY’ TO BEAT THE RECORD
The African ‘Army’ will try to attack the current records of the tour in both the men’s and women’s categories. Three men accredit records of less than an hour in the distance: the Kenyan Hillary Kipkoech, the Ethiopian Tadese Takele Bikila and the Eritrean Abrar Osman, the main favorites to fight for first place.
However, other runners such as the Kenyans Enos Kales, Edwin Kipruto, Albert Rop or Edwin Kipkemoi, Jackson Kipleting, and the Ethiopian rookie Tesema Mokenin form a large group of applicants for the top positions and to try to improve the best historical records achieved in the capital. from Spain.
Javi Guerra from Segovia (1h01:21) has just run the second best 10-kilometer road race of his career, and Yago Rojo from Madrid continues to improve after overcoming an injury that has kept him out for a long time. Jorge González will also be on the starting line.
In women, the Spanish Clara Simal, who has just completed a great marathon in Seville (2h30) will be the main rival of the African athletes. The athlete from Valdemoro will look for her best mark in a half marathon in the streets that she knows so well in the center of Madrid.
Up to three of the favorites already know what it is to run and achieve their personal bests in this same test: the Kenyan Sharon Kemboi, second in 2022 with 1h07:28, and the Ethiopians Alemitu Tariku Olana and Ayinadis Teshome Birle, second and third, respectively, in the 2021 edition. Also Ethiopian Zewditu Aderaw Gelaw is the runner with the best mark with 1h07:25 achieved this year.
The French Marie Bouchard (1h12:19) will make it difficult for Clara Simal in the duel to see who will be the first European to finish.
In the renovated circuit it has been shown that you can also run very fast in Madrid, since the historical records of the test have been broken, such as the records of Ronald Kiprotich, with 59:38 in 2021 -with seven runners below the hour-, and Winfridah Moraa, with 1h07:22 in 2022.
Likewise, triathlete Javier Gómez Noya, Olympic silver medalist and multiple times world champion in different categories, Madrid marathon runner Chema Martínez, and two-time marathon world champion Abel will join the starting line of the Movistar Madrid Half Marathon and the ProFuturo Race Antón, among other great athletes.
In the ProFuturo Race, the main favorite is the Moroccan athlete Hicham Sigueni, a two-time Olympian in the 3,000-meter steeplechase or winner of the 2015 Stockholm Diamond League.
COURSE CHANGE
The Movistar Madrid Half Marathon 2023 has slightly modified its route in recent years to make it faster and more comfortable for the participants.
Although the location of the start (Paseo de La Castellana) and finish line (Paseo de Recoletos) is kept practically the same as in 2022, there will be some changes in the area between the Quevedo roundabout and the Ruiz Jiménez roundabout, and this will improve significantly with the I go through streets and avenues that are wider and straighter.
There is also another small modification, since from Velázquez street to Príncipe de Vergara street the test will go through Ortega y Gasset street, instead of Juan Bravo street, avoiding a climb of about 300 meters that will soften a little more the profile.
What is added to the route to compensate for these two areas that are removed goes from Plaza de Castilla, along the side of Paseo de la Castellana, to Avenida de Monforte de Lemos.
FUTURE CAREER
The ProFuturo Race will celebrate its seventh edition this Sunday within the framework of the Movistar Madrid Half Marathon and is intended for the ProFuturo digital education program, promoted by the Telefónica Foundation and the “La Caixa” Foundation, to reduce the educational gap between boys and girls in the world’s most vulnerable environments.
The Movistar Madrid Half Marathon continues to maintain the ‘Road Race Label’ seal of the World Athletics international federation, and was named by the Madrid City Council as an “event of general interest for the city”, since it is one of the most emblematic and with country tradition.