22,500 runners take part in 48th edition of Amsterdam marathon on Sunday

In Amsterdam, 22,500 runners will participate in the 48th edition of the marathon on Sunday. Never before have so many runners started in the marathon in the capital, organizer Le Champion announced earlier. The city marathon will officially begin at 9 a.m. in the Olympic Stadium.

About 15,000 runners will start in the Olympic Stadium, while the other runners will start outside the stadium. After one kilometer, the groups will meet and run the same route. The route then follows the passage under the Rijksmuseum, along the Amstel, and through the Vondelpark, with all runners finishing in the stadium. Roads that are part of the route will be closed to traffic, warns the municipality. Many buses and trams will also be detoured. The roads will be reopened half an hour after the last participants have passed by.

A record number of 48,000 participants from 140 countries are on the starting list for the city marathon. A total of 22,500 runners are participating in the full marathon, which has a distance of 42.195 kilometers. Almost 20,000 people will be doing the half marathon. A total of 45,000 tickets have been sold. In addition to the running event, the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) will take place in the capital this weekend, which will attract tens of thousands of visitors.

In the men's event, Ethiopia's Tsegaye Getachew and Kenya's Philemon Kiplimo are the fastest on paper with personal best times of 2:04:49 and 2:04:56 respectively. They are aiming for the course record of 2:03:39. Getachew won the 42.195-kilometre race through Amsterdam in 2022.

Ethiopian Yalemzerf Yehualaw is the favorite to win the women's race. She is aiming for the course record of 2:17:20. Yehualaw won the 2022 London Marathon and triumphed in the Hamburg Marathon that same year in 2:17:23.

Khalid Choukoud is on the hunt for a personal record. That is currently 2.07.37. The 38-year-old runner from The Hague participated in the Olympic marathon of Paris last summer. Marcella Herzog has the best time of the Dutch women who are at the start with 2.33.10.

In the run-up to the Amsterdam Marathon, barriers and aid stations have been set up all over the city. Due to the running event, some streets as well as some parts of the Dutch capital are completely closed, such as Watergraafsmeer, Oud-Zuid and most parts of the city center on Sunday, reports AT5.

At the Dam tot Damloop in September, the last groups of runners were unable to start because the participants felt unwell due to the hot weather. The organization fears the wind in particular on Sunday, they announced earlier. “The forecast predicts a lot of wind from the south. This is unfavorable for fast times.”