Santander (EFE).- More than 2,300 athletes will run the Half Marathon, the Urban Mile or the 5 kilometers of Santander, which will be counted for the Spanish Championship and whose winners will go to the World Cup in Riga, starting on September 30.
Specifically, the Mile will be held -with some 800 runners- on Saturday 13, starting at 4:30 p.m., and will run along Paseo Pereda, through a route that participants must complete three times to add the 1,609 meters of distance Of the test.
On Sunday 14, the Santander Half Marathon, the Spanish Absolute Half Marathon Championship and the Spanish Master Half Marathon Championship will be held, all three with a distance of 21,097 meters, which will begin at 9:00 am.
And, at 12:00 noon, the Santander 5-kilometer route and the Spanish 5-kilometer route championship will take place.
All the tests, organized by the Peña de Fondo club in collaboration with the City Council, have been presented this Tuesday at an event in Santander.
Mayor Gema Igual and athletes, active or retired, such as Olympic champion Ruth Beitia, Fabián Roncero and Irene Pelayo, who recently became the oldest, at 43 years and 59 days, to win the Spanish Marathon Championship.
“We will be able to enjoy the presence and competitive energy of our greatest athletes, as well as all the magic of athletics and sport,” said the mayoress, about this athletics event in Santander.
On behalf of the Royal Spanish Athletics Federation, Ruth Beitia stated that “nobody could refuse” to choose this city for this event because of its “emblematic spaces, presided over by the bay”.
London Olympics bronze medal
In addition, Ruth Beitia has told the mayor that she is “waiting” for the Santander Sports Museum, which houses her main achievements, to host the high jump bronze medal of the London 2012 Games, which she was awarded nine years later, in 2021, after the disqualification of the Russian Svetlana Shkolina.
Gema Igual has responded that it will be able to deposit that medal when the campaign is over because now achievements cannot be “sold”. “And you deserve that we relate all your achievements”, she has influenced her.
The former Cantabrian athlete was initially fourth in the high jump final, won by Russian Anna Chicherova -also sanctioned for doping in Beijing 2008 and Berlin 2009- with 2.05 meters, followed by American Brigetta Barrett with 2.03 and Shkolina with the same brand.
Four years after that appointment in London, the so-called ‘McLaren report’ was uncovered, an investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency carried out by Law Professor Richard McLaren.