News Archive

The

Vienna City Marathon has always been an event of innovations. Back in 1995 Austria’s

biggest one-day sporting event was the first marathon worldwide to introduce

the chip timing system. This quickly became a standard in international road running.

Five years ago Vienna’s

organisers arranged that runners were able to order text messages with their

finishing times to be sent on mobile phones. This year runners and spectators

were provided with split times and other race information every five kilometres

through instant text messages.

For

next year’s 23^rd edition of the Vienna City Marathon on 7^th

May, which will attract about 22,000 participants in various running events,

race director Wolfgang Konrad and his team will introduce another innovation.

But this time it is something unique that can not be copied anywhere else in

the world. The motto in 2006 will be: ,Run Vienna - enjoy Mozart’. Organisers

will combine Vienna’s

premier sporting event with what the Austrian capital is very famous for:

Classical music and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Since it will be 250 years ago

that Mozart was born, 2006 will be the,Year of Mozart’. His music will play a

major part in next year’s marathon. It will be played along the course. And

runners may also book a special Mozart sightseeing tour or an evening of music

when they register for the race.

“The Vienna City

Marathon still has a lot of potential. In the long term it is our aim to

establish the race as a world class product”, Wolfgang Konrad said. And the

marathon’s marketing specialist Andreas Sachs explains: “We will be neither

faster nor bigger than Berlin or London. But

we have a great chance of developing our race into a unique marathon because of

Vienna’s

musical and cultural background.”

Nonetheless

the Vienna City Marathon, which boosts the most imposing cultural marathon course

worldwide, has produced a number of high-class results in recent years. Course

records stand at 2:08:35 hours

(Kenya’s

Samson Kandie in 2004) and 2:23:47 (Italy’s

Maura Viceconte in 2000), which proofs that Vienna not

only offers a unique but also a fast course. This year’s winner Mubarak Shami (Qatar)

became more prominent recently, when he won the silver medal at the IAAF World

Half Marathon Championships.