MADRID, 31 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The 2024 Zurich Seville Marathon, which will be held on February 18, has been chosen by the Royal Spanish Athletics Federation (RFEA) to be the Spanish Distance Championship, in an event in which the champions will qualify. direct for the next Olympic Games in Paris 2024.
On the flattest circuit in Europe, which will start again from the Paseo de Las Delicias in the Andalusian capital and which already has 8,000 registered, there will be athletes of the caliber of Ayad Lamdassem, Ibrahim Chakir, Javi Guerra and Meritxell Soler. In addition, federations such as Great Britain, Israel and Turkey have confirmed that they will hold their ‘Trials’ or official qualifiers for the Games, with the possible six places at stake for their national athletes.
Both the female and male winners will qualify for Paris 2024, as long as they achieve the minimum mark for their selection. The minimum times required by World Athletics for this event are set at 2:08:10 for men and 2:26:50 for women, while those of the RFEA are 2:09:40 and 2:28:00.
In the 2023 edition, Meritxell Soler approached the Spanish record in her debut (2:26:14) and achieved the Olympic minimum for Paris 2024. In the Seville capital, 25 Olympic minimums and 33 World Cup minimums and 15 have been achieved this year. national records in the distance in 2022 and 2023. It is the test with the highest density of runners under 2 hours and 15 minutes worldwide -53 athletes-.
Other Spanish athletes such as Ayad Lamdassem achieved the Spanish record in 2022 in Seville (2:06:25), and other great records such as Javi Guerra’s 2:07:27 or Hamid Ben Daoud’s 2:07:33 in 2020 In 2023, the first Spaniard to finish was Ibrahim Chakir, stopping the clock at 2:09:16 and achieving the minimum for the Games.