A lucrative prize kitty awaits top performers at Sunday's Standard Chartered Marathon in Nairobi, the organising committee has revealed.
While announcing the new prize structure, chairman of the Local Organising Committee, Peter Gitau, revealed that the winner in both the men and women's races will bag Sh2m, a Sh500, 000 increment fro last year's award.
In addition, the prize money for both the men and women's winners of the half marathon and 21km wheelchair races has been doubled to Sh300,000.
Other races to feature in the annual event include men and women’s 10km, 5km family fun run and the newly introduced corporate relay challenge. The event whose registration ends on Friday on www.nairobimarathon.com has so far attracted about 15,508 runners and Gitau is hopeful the numbers will shoot by 40 per cent by race day.
Kit collection is currently ongoing at KICC for all individual runners, whereas those for corporate entries will be delivered to all registered companies.
“We are optimistic of reaching our target. There is a big uptake from both individuals and corporate entries. We expect this trend to boost the numbers towards achieving our target of 25,000 runners,” said Gitau, who added that CCTV cameras will be installed on the route to curb cheating.
The event organisers have announced a few changes to the route, largely due to relocation of the start and finish points for the various races.
All the races will now start at Uhuru Highway and end inside Nyayo Stadium, save for the 10km and Family Fun races which will end at the Bunyala Road and Lusaka Road roundabouts respectively.
Proceeds from registration will be channelled to ‘Futuremakers,’ an initiative aimed at supporting disadvantaged young people from low-income households and people with visual impairments. The Marathon has received support from Radio Africa Group, AAR, Subaru Kenya, Athletics Keny, Nairobi County among others.
Barnabas Korir, Athletics Kenya Nairobi Branch chairman said: “We are paying extra attention to the technical aspects of the city road race as they bid to have it promoted to the league of the world’s elite marathons. AK will deploy more than 200 technical officials to oversee this year’s Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon.”
The Nairobi Traffic Area department of the National Police Service released an elaborate road closure diversions schedule that will see traffic to and out of the city centre diverted to alternative roads on Sunday between 4am and 2pm.
The affected roads include sections of Mombasa Road, Uhuru Highway, Upper Hill and Forest Road while within the CBD, Kenyatta Avenue, Muindi Mbingu and sections of Haile Selassie and University Way will also be closed.
“We do not expect a major disruption in the flow of traffic. We have carefully organised traffic diversions to ensure that road users have alternative routes to critical locations in the city including hospitals, churches and airports,” said Joshua Omukata, Traffic Commandant, Nairobi County.
