Sydney marathon’s debut as major is timed perfectly with Australia’s running boom | Elise Beacom
Event will be biggest country has seen as 35,000 marathon runners share the roads with superstars Eliud Kipchoge and Sifan Hassan
Marathons are selling out like Taylor Swift tickets. Running is in vogue and many newer runners are seeking the shortest route from couch to marathon – a distance once considered superhuman. Now, amid the proliferation of training shared online, and the Nedd Brockmann mentality that extreme equals better, running 42.2km has never felt so achievable.
As the Sydney marathon gears up for its Abbott World Marathon Majors debut on 31 August, it has the running world at its feet – everyone from “runfluencers” and run crews to rusted-on runners keen to tick off their next, or first, major. Sydney has introduced a ballot system like the other major marathons, which are increasingly hard to get into. A staggering 1.1 million people applied for a spot on the start line at the 2026 London Marathon. Other Australian races are adapting to the running boom too – Melbourne, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast have fine-tuned their courses to expand capacity amid record-breaking sign-ups.