Marathon and Half Marathon Condition Routes

Lisbon Marathon debuts new route with record 15,000 athletes

The Lisbon Marathon will debut a new 42 km route this Saturday, starting in Carcavelos, passing through the Municipality of Oeiras and arriving in Lisbon, in a race that will feature around 15 thousand athletes.

The official race on the International Athletics Federation calendar, presented this Friday, will bring “a number never seen before” to the Portuguese capital, according to Carlos Móia, executive president of the Marathon Clube de Portugal, thanks to a partnership with the London Marathon.

“The Lisbon Marathon has a new route and for the first time in the history of marathons in Portugal we have registrations of around 15 thousand people. For years we had around seven thousand registered, but this increase is due to the great partnership we made with the London Marathon, which, for 55 thousand athletes, has more than one million registrations”, highlighted the director.

Carlos Móia highlighted that implementing the partnership was very difficult, “because the London Marathon is very demanding and this forced registration to close to 15 thousand people”.

“We have to be very careful, because this is a jump for twice as many athletes, and that’s why we changed the route, which will now start at Nova SBE, in Carcavelos”, explained the person responsible for the organization.

The departure of the Lisbon Marathon is scheduled for 08:00 on Saturday, following the race to Cascais and then to Praça do Comércio, on a route always close to the sea and which unites the municipalities of Cascais, Oeiras and Lisbon, all represented at the event’s presentation conference.

“This is brutal support for the London Marathon, which will take us to a much higher level, becoming one of the great marathons in Europe”, added the executive president of the Maratona Clube de Portugal, revealing that the Half Marathon, scheduled for Sunday, has also reached the registration limit.

Among the 32,000 athletes registered in the two races, the highlight in the 42 km were the Ethiopians Gadisa Birhanu Shumie (2:04:59, in Seville, in 2023) and Betesfa Getahun (2:05:28, in Amsterdam, in 2019), both with records better than the maximum in the Lisbon race of Andualem Belay Shiferaw (2:05:45, in 2022).

In the ladies, the best mark of the old route has been 2:24:13 since 2016 and, this year, there are three athletes with a personal maximum below that record, namely Tadelech Bekele (2:21:40, London 2018), Meseret Dinke (2:22:52, Abu Dhabi 2022) and Abebech Afework (2:23:33, Dubai 2015).

Among the national representatives, who will compete in the Half Marathon starting on Sunday from the Vasco da Gama Bridge and finishing at Praça do Comércio, Rui Pinto and Susana Santos return to the competition, after the Tokyo World Cup.

“In Tokyo, the conditions were very difficult, very hot, very humid, but the transition is going much better than I expected. I’m fine and I have some expectations. I want to do the best qualifying possible, run as fast as possible and feel good”, commented the Portuguese athlete.

Susana Santos, who will be joined by her compatriot Solange Jesus and South African Glenrose