Compared with what it has become, the very first London marathon was a tentative affair. It took place in 1981. Greater London’s population had reached an all-time post-war low of 6.6 million, with inner city areas particularly hit by a decades-long exodus to the suburbs and beyond. The Big Bang deregulation of financial services, which would transform the capital’s economy and its people-pulling power, was still two years away.
By today’s standards, the place was half empty. Yet the authorities kept the first marathon confined. More than 22,000 applied to take part, but the Met limited the number accepted to around 7,500. There were 6,225 finishers. American Dick Beardsley and Norwegian Inge Simonsen were first to the winning tape, breaking it hand-in-hand.
In the ensuing 35 years, the London Marathon has grown with the same relentless vigour as the city itself. This year’s event is expected to see 38,000 lining up at the start out of a record total of 247,069 who applied. One of them will become the one millionth finisher since the inaugural event, held in the year that Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, Bucks Fizz won the Eurovision Song Contest and Brixton exploded into riots.
The London Marathon was brought about by two British Olympic medallists, John Disley and Chris Brasher, who was also part of the team effort that enabled Roger Bannister to be the first person to break the four-minute mile. Brasher had been inspired by the New York Marathon. In the Observer, Brasher wrote: “In one of the most violent, trouble-stricken cities in the world, 11,532 men, women and children from 40 countries of the world, assisted by 2.5m black, white and yellow people, Protestants and Catholics, Jews and Muslims, Buddhists and Confucians, laughed, cheered and suffered during the greatest folk festival the world has seen.”
The 1981 event wasn’t the first time a marathon was run in the capital. That happened at the 1908 London Olympics, though the race began outside the metropolis, at Windsor Castle. The royal residence was also adopted as the starting point for the Polytechnic Marathon, which began the following year, inspired by the Olympic race. Until 1973, “the Poly” ended in West London, initially at Stamford Bridge, then at the White City stadium where the 1908 Games had been held and from 1938 at the new Chiswick stadium of the Polytechnic Harriers athletics club, the original organisers of the race. But between 1973 and 1992 the race it was contained within the Windsor area and it passed into history in 1996.
But though the first London Marathon wasn’t wholly ground-breaking in that respect, it was in being one of the earliest examples of a modern mass participation occasion in London and a partnership between its then “top-tier” layer of municipal government - at that time, the Greater London Council - and a commercial sponsor, in the form of Gillette. The enduring essence of the event is, of course, its vast collective spirit, a combination of its scale, its charity fund-raising mission, its huge range of participants - from elite runners to wheelchair competitors to extraordinary octogenarians, to people in animal costumes - and the carnival mood created by the thousands of spectators who line the course from its starting points on Blackheath and Greenwich Park to its end on The Mall.
That course has altered only a little over the years. The finish line for the 1981 race was on Constitution Hill. The following year it was moved to Westminster Bridge and stayed there until 1994. After that, it was switched to its present location in front of Buckingham Palace. The most substantial change, though, came in 2005 when the organisers decided to drop a slow, crowded and sometimes slippery section that took a twisting, partly cobbled path - later carpeted - around St Katherine’s Docks past the Tower of London and Tower Hotel. The subsequent loop round the Isle of Dogs became run anti-clockwise instead of clockwise as before. In 2008, a small diversion was put in to avoid a a suspected gas leak at the Old Rose pub in Wapping but both it had gone again by 2009.
The race sponsors have changed too. Gillette provided £75,000 in 1981 and supported the race for the next two years. Then Mars stepped in, upping the figure to £350,000 by 1986, partly to meet the fees of professional athletes taking part. The future Lord Ashcroft’s ADT took over from 1989. Then came NutraSweet and, from 1996 to 2009, Flora. Since then it’s been a Virgin Money event, and known as the Virgin Money London Marathon since 2014. The sums invested each year now run into the millions - £17m between 2010 and 2014, according to the official website. The amounts raised for charity are far higher - a record £54.1m last year, bringing the total since 1981 to over £770m.
When Virgin first became involved the company’s boss Sir Richard Branson solicited suggestions for a completely different route, suggesting it should be “more fun and glamorous.” That never happened. Good thing too. The sections through Charlton, Deptford and Poplar are as much a part of the marathon’s London character as those more photogenic sections past “the sights,” just as they are as much a part of London’s history. That history now also contains the London Marathon itself, a great London occasion that showcases the city at its best.
