First of all, I would like to thank my friend Aditya for somehow finding out and providing the complete results of the Hutch Delhi Half marathon, 2005. The results can be accessed by clicking here.
I talked to Vivek yesterday (my colleague who participated with me), and he has some contacts with decent runners here in Delhi, and they mentioned that Delhi Marathon has only a 50:50 chance of being held. That should not be surprising, no media coverage, an absolute junk of a website with no updates, it would actually surprise me if they get more than 500 runners with this level of awareness. Mumbai marathon seems to be a more suitable event, and I will definitely be there.
Mumbai marathon registrations now start Nov 6th (from the earlier date of Oct 27th). I went through last years participation figures and was able to make out that about 4000 people participated in the Mumbai half and 1000 in the full marathon. This is quite comparable to the Hutch Delhi half where the half had about 5000 participants (or registrations, atleast).
And taking a look at the HDHM results, it is apparent that only 10% finished, 500 from 5000! This I find very surprising. I can think of three reasons to justify this. I believe the primary reason of this low finish is that very few actually participated. I will never be able to make out how many participants were there, but this is India, where people do not take these things seriously, and I can expect a dropout of even 50% or more. I believe that this is very unlike other countries like Singapore, etc. The second reason I can attribute to the low finishes is that most people simply did not opt for the Championchip. No chip, no timing, no result. The third reason would be people dropping out midway from the race, through I do not think this would be a significant category. Together, I think this would justify the 10% timed finishes from about 5000 registrants.
Keep Running!
