Lagos bubbles as 10th Access Bank Marathon holds today

The Access Bank Lagos City marathon, a Gold label category event will witness the presence of three platinum status athletes as the 10th edition holds today in the commercial city of Lagos.

The General Manager of the race, Olympian Yusuf Alli, confirmed their arrival on Thursday during an interview with newsmen at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos, stressing that out of the three of the platinum status athletes, two are male and a female.

He expressed confidence, describing the presence of the athletes as part of the move to achieve the much coveted Platinum Label.

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Alli said efforts have been put in place to ensure the marathon becomes the first in Africa to achieve the Platinum.

“Right now, we have good numbers of elite runners participating this year. We have seven gold medal runners in male category, two in Platinum, five gold labels for females and one in Platinum.

“At the moment, the World Athletics (WA) has changed the ranking modalities and the runners must be among the top 300.

 “We have ticked all the boxes needed for qualification for the Platinum label. We are changing the status quo this year. Achieving the Platinum label category will be the first of such in Africa among other countries staging marathons. For this 10th anniversary, we have the elite athletes that can give us the Platinum Medal and also have our cross record which is 2hours:10minutes,”

“The timing by the athletes is right for us, which will put us in good standing for the Platinum label’’ Alli said.

Ahead of both the 42km and 10km race, he allayed fears of insufficient waters, acknowledging their effort to mitigate the challenges that confronted athletes during the last edition won by Kenya’s Bernard Sang. 

“Then, the issue of water came to place last year, we have addressed that, hopefully it will not be an issue. If you can cross all those hurdles, I think we will go for 2 hours, 10minutes,” he said.

He added this edition will witness the inclusion of pacers, stressing that three will be in the men category while one in the female category.

Alli hinted that over 30,000 athletes have registered, saying that more runners registered for the 10km race than the full marathon.