News Archive

At its annual meeting hosted last weekend in Würzburg (by Residenzlauf

Würzburg), the German Road Races (GRR) council, the association of

road-race organizers in Germany, debate focused on internal issues and the

problems relating to favorably advancing the road-racing circuit in Germany,

and this includes the relationship between GRR and the German Athletics

Association.

German Road Races members include all the major marathon organizers in

Germany, not to mention many other popular marathons and races over other

distances. Membership status has also been granted to three events organizers

from Austria and Italy. Last year, a working party on GRR organization was set

up, headed by Andreas Nels (Ford Cologne Marathon). It presented its findings

at this years meeting, and after a lively discussion its fundamental

recommendations adopted. The GRR will thus not aspire to be registered as an

charitable association and will instead focus on more intensive work that is

binding on its members, and on consultation on specific issues.

GRR has to date had two spokesmen - the Board has now been expanded to a

total of six. The members are, in addition to the re-elected spokesmen Erwin

Rixen (Olympus Marathon Hamburg) and Horst Milde (real,- BERLIN-MARATHON),

Harald Rösch (Ford Cologne Marathon), Bernd Düngen (Rhein-Ruhr

Marathon Duisburg), Gernot Weigl (Medien-Marathon Munich) and Artur Schmidt

(Adventslauf Herborn). Its duties will be to devise new concepts for GRR. This

will also include future links with the German Athletics Association. In

addition to its work at the AGM, the new Board will in future also be

authorized to issue statements spontaneously on GRRs behalf on developments and

trends in road running, as this will enable it to help make certain the

athletics community and the specialist bodies and agencies as well as the

general public have a stronger awareness of the ever-growing importance of

running.

To this end, the GRR also wishes to cooperate at the level of promoting new

running talent by providing support for them. Another theme will be the

implementation of the fee structure put in place by the German Athletics

Association at the beginning of the year. GRR advocates allocating the German

10k and Half-Marathon Championships to established and successful event

organizers instead of their being awarded on a rotational basis to the federal

state associations. Road-race championships should be a strong ad medium for

running and not simply small events with a few hundred competitors and hardly

any spectators. After all, the incorporation of the German Marathon

Championships into existing city marathons has more than proved its worth.

The German Marathon Championships will take place in 2003 in Duisburg,

Hanover has applied to host them in 2004 and Regensburg wants to organize them

in 2005. The new Board will immediately start work and hopes to arrange a

meeting at short notice with the Governing Presidium of the German Athletics

Association.

Finally, four new members were elected to the GRR (among others Morgenpost

Dresden Marathon, Volksbanken Marathon Münster) - so that now over 30

major events are represented on the GRR.

The GRR has the following members:

The marathons:

Berlin, Dresden, Duisburg, Essen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Karlsruhe,

Cologne, Leipzig, Mainz, Munich, Münster, Regensburg, Rennsteig,

Schwarzwald, Weinstrasse, Würzburg - (South Tyrolia/Bolzano, Wachau,

Vienna).

The half-marathons:

Berlin, Frankfurt, Paderborn, Stuttgart.

Other distances:

Berlin (25 km), Borgholzhausen, Hamburg (Alsterlauf/Stadtpark), Herborn,

Kassel, Würzburg (Residenzlauf).