Stanley Marathon is officially the world's most southerly 26-miler
Falklands Radio reports that the Falkland Islands’ governor, Nigel Haywood, has crossed the finishing line in the the world’s most southerly marathon “with the governor’s flag in his hand”.
Which begs the question: will his counterpart on St Helena, Mark Capes, be tackling the world’s most remote marathon in June 2012?
Or maybe he’ll pass the flag to the island’s financial secretary, Paul Blessington, who has a history of running home after work on a Tuesday – six miles, 2,000 feet of ascent, partly off-road, in under an hour.
There is some pressure on His Excellency here: his predecessor, Governor Gurr, was known to go running, and also completed 100 ascents of Jacob’s Ladder, the brutal flight of 699 steps rising up from Jamestown.
A picture on the Sartma.com news website on the Falklands shows a sizeable field setting off for this year’s event – including relay teams.
So how do the Falklands manage to attract so many runners, when the result of the last St Helena marathon was a foregone conclusion, just so long as the only entrant managed to finish? (She did).
The first male and female finishers in the Stanley Marathon (Robert Harden and Argentinian Claudia Camargo) each won £1,100. The first relay team shared £900.
That might have something to do with it.
Sergeant Harden, a gym instructor based on the islands at Hillside, had already won the Cape Pembroke half-marathon, running in aid of the Royal British Legion.
He’d set himself a challenge of completing both events in a combined time of 4 hours and 45 minutes – meaning he had to finish the full 26-miler in 3 hours 28 minutes. For every minute he went over that time, he’d promised to donate an extra pound to the legion.
Frank Jaffray was the only Falklands-born runner to go the full distance.
The official times haven’t yet been published (as at 1800hrs UK time on 19 March 2012).
Congratulations to all the runners. And good luck to Governor Capes…
LISTEN:
BFBS Radio interview with Sergeant Harden
LINKS:
Standard Chartered Stanley Marathon
St Helena Festival of Running 2012
Note, this post has been being written by someone who managed a time of 5 mins and 45 seconds when a race up the Jacob’s Ladder was staged to mark the first Governor’s Cup yacht race, and who was recently irked to discover that because the St Helena media didn’t work over the Christmas holidays back then, the result went unrecorded. The winner, from New Caledonia, was 12 seconds faster, which would put him high up the current top ten – but the records make no mention of it. Unless anyone kept a copy?
