The first Elche-Alicante Marathon has surpassed expectations.
1,500 participants have already registered eight months ahead of its scheduled start on November 30 near the Altamira Palace in Elche.
Half of the runners come from outside the province of Alicante, including international athletes from the Netherlands, the United States, Switzerland, Belgium Great Britain, Italy, and France.
Registration is open on maratonelchealicante.com.
Alicante’s Councillor for Sports, Toni Gallego, highlighted the event’s early success, with expectations rising from 1,500 to over 3,000 participants.
The race will cover a mostly flat, gently descending 42-kilometre course: 11 kilometres through Elche, 20 kilometres between the two cities, and the final 11 kilometres through Alicante.
The Elche-Alicante Marathon is one of the few in the world, alongside Boston in the US, with a start and finish in different locations.
One of the first benchmarks for gauging the impact of a high-level athletics event in Alicante was seen on February 16 with the 29th Meridiano International Half Marathon & 10k Aguas de Alicante. A total of 5,300 athletes took part setting a record for participation. The impact reached 1.5 million, with 80 per cent hotel occupancy, and a significant impact on economic sectors such as the hotel and restaurant industry.
