The first international Delhi Marathon is supposed to be held on Feb 12th, 2005, or so their website claims. People from all over the world and from our country would be participating. No doubt they will, if they have a desire to see the worst of marathons we can have here.
As I had mentioned in one of my previous posts, this Delhi marathon was supposed to be held on Dec 4th. Then, just a few days before the event, they changed the date to Dec 11th, maintaining that it was clashing with the Pune marathon. Ok, I get that part. However, the Delhi marathon website has been up for ages. Did not even a single person at the Sports Management Group of India (SMGI, the event organisers) know about the marathon events in India when they chose this date? Is this sports management… or mismanagement at its worst? What about the athletes, yes… those top 100 international runners or whatever… and other runners, what about them? Who will make arrangements to change their flight and stay schedules here?
And if this was nothing, to top it all… SMGI goes ahead and announces that the marathon has been postponed to Feb 12th. You deserve a cake fellows, one with cow dung all over it, only you could have thought about this. Come on guys, this is a marathon for god’s sake, not a fun run in the park. People prepare for this, for months … oh, I forgot… how could you guys know what preparation is, because if you knew that, they this would not have been postponed at all!
So now, its Feb 12th, Great! The website looks great too! no details of when the races would actually start, no route map, no clue about any drink and medical stations… hey, do these guys actually know all these things…? I doubt. Instead of the race route, here’s what they have to say:
“The Delhi International Marathon’s flat, loop course is supposed to be one of the fastest in the world. Runners will pass through several landmarks of Delhi, each adding their unique flavour to the course.”
Hey fellows, give the route man! I want to run the marathon, don’t give me that landmark shit of yours. Wow, they even have the guts to mention the loop course… I am sure the the honchos at SMGI have run over it personally to verify if it was really fast.
On their website, they have these fancy statements of these political big-wigs:
I welcome the step and wish Delhi Marathon all success.
– Rt. Hon. Sheila Dikshit [Chief Minister of Delhi]
I welcome the step and wish all success to the organizers of Delhi Marathon.
– Rt. Hon. Renuka Chowdhury [Minister For Tourism of India.]
I salute these guys… they have statements from Sonia Gandhi to who’s who of Delhi and India. I thinks they thought that this event is like those Congress and BJP annual sessions we had recently.
The less is said about the advertising of this event in the media, the better. When I look at the Hutch Delhi Half marathon, now that was something which was marketed well, in every possible media. Ads all over, radio, TV, newspapers, daily coverage in TOI leading up to the days to the event. And what do we have here, nothing… silence… delhimarathon.com bullshit… no online registrations (of course they don’t forget to add that these will be opening shortly… which by now, even you people will realise will not open, never, never ever).
So, what does it all say. Does it reflect anything on how things get done here in our country. No. A lot of people are doing a great job all over. It is only these few out of date people, who forgot to walk with the times, I guess they just got left behind, too slow to run… or even walk.