London Marathon History: From 1981 to a World Major
London Marathon history from the first race on 29 March 1981 to a World Major: the founders, the first winners, the finishes, sponsors and records in the UK.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished London Marathon24 min read
- First race
- 29 March 1981
- Founders
- Chris Brasher and John Disley
- First winners
- Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen, joint
- Finish since 1994
- The Mall
Sunday 29 March 1981, late morning, at the top of Constitution Hill. Two men came round the corner from Buckingham Palace holding hands. Dick Beardsley, an American dairy farmer from Minnesota, and Inge Simonsen of Norway had run the last miles together and decided neither would outsprint the other, so the first London Marathon had two winners, both credited with 2:11:48. Behind them came something nobody in British athletics had seen before: thousands of ordinary runners on closed roads through the capital.
That is the short answer to the London Marathon's history. The race was founded by Chris Brasher and John Disley, two former Olympic steeplechasers, after Brasher ran the New York City Marathon in 1979. The first edition had just over six thousand finishers. It has been run every year since, in April or late spring, except for three autumn editions from 2020 to 2022, and it grew into a founder member of the World Marathon Majors and the largest single-day fundraising event in the world. Everything below is how it got from one Sunday in 1981 to there.
- 1981Year of the first race
- 59830Finishers in 2026
- 87.3Raised at the 2025 race, £ million
- 1133813Ballot applications for 2026
Figures from London Marathon Events and Guinness World Records for the years shown; fundraising is the confirmed final total for the 2025 race. All of these totals move from year to year.
The direct answer: founders, first race and the London Marathon's dates
The race belongs to two men, and the order of their names matters less than people think. Chris Brasher won Olympic gold in the 3,000 metres steeplechase at Melbourne in 1956 and later wrote on athletics for The Observer. John Disley had taken bronze in the same event at Helsinki four years earlier and became one of the people who built orienteering in Britain. Brasher had the idea and the newspaper column. Disley had the patience for course plans, police meetings and measured routes. Neither would have managed it alone.
The dates are simple to state:
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| October 1979 | Brasher and Disley run the New York City Marathon |
| 1979, after New York | Brasher's article on the race appears in The Observer |
| 29 March 1981 | First London Marathon, Greenwich and Blackheath to Constitution Hill |
| 1983 | Wheelchair race added to the programme |
| 2006 | London becomes a founder member of the World Marathon Majors |
| 4 October 2020 | Elite-only race on laps of St James's Park after the spring date was lost |
| 23 April 2023 | First April race since 2019 |
The marathon was run in spring from 1981 until 2019, usually on a Sunday in April, occasionally late March or early May depending on Easter and the calendar. The Covid-19 pandemic pushed 2020, 2021 and 2022 to the first weekend in October. Spring returned in 2023. For 2027 the organisers have announced a one-off, with the race held across the Saturday and Sunday of a single weekend over the same course, an arrangement covered on our London Marathon ballot page because it changed how many places the draw could offer.
What the race has never been is cancelled. The difference between a postponement with an elite race and a cancellation matters to a group of runners called the Ever Presents, who have finished every edition since 1981, and to the record books.
Brasher's Observer article and the six aims written down for the race
The article ran in The Observer under the headline "The World's Most Human Race". Brasher described New York's five boroughs turning out, runners of every shape and age, and a city that had shut its streets for a day and enjoyed it. Then came the question that started everything: whether London could stage such an event.
Plenty of people had asked versions of that question. The difference was that Brasher and Disley wrote down what the race was for before they went looking for permission. Their six aims, as the organisers still record them, were roughly these:
- To improve the overall standard and status of British marathon running by providing a fast course.
- To show that, on occasions, people of every background can be united.
- To raise money for recreational facilities in London.
- To help boost tourism in London.
- To prove that Britain could organise a major sporting event as well as anyone.
- To have fun and provide some happiness and a sense of achievement in a troubled world.
The list is more interesting for its order than its content. A fast course comes first, so this was conceived as an athletics event that the public could share, not a fun run with an elite race bolted on. Charity, in the sense of runners raising money for causes of their own, is not on it at all. The third aim was about the race's own surplus going to sport and recreation through a charitable trust the founders set up for the purpose, and that trust has distributed grants to playing fields, parks and community facilities ever since.
Winning over the police, the boroughs and the Greater London Council
The obstacle was never the runners. It was the road.
Closing a marathon course through London required the Metropolitan Police to agree that it could be done safely and that the officers could be found to do it on a Sunday. The City of London Police had their own square mile on the route. Every borough the course crossed had a say over its own roads, and the Greater London Council had strategic responsibility for the main routes. Brasher and Disley went round all of them, with a business plan, a measured course and the argument that the city would gain more than it lost.
They also needed money they could show. A sponsorship deal with Gillette gave the plan a backer, which in turn reassured the authorities that the organisers would not be passing the bill to the public. The insurance, the barriers, the medical cover and the clean-up all had to be priced and paid before a single road was closed.
- New YorkBrasher and Disley run the New York City Marathon in October 1979
- The columnBrasher's Observer piece asks whether London could hold a race like it
- The aimsThe founders write down six aims, putting a fast course first
- The sponsorGillette agrees to back the event, giving the plan a funded budget
- The authoritiesPolice, boroughs and the Greater London Council are persuaded to close the roads
- EntryThousands of postal applications arrive for a field the roads can hold
- Race day29 March 1981, Greenwich and Blackheath to Constitution Hill
The sequence the founders followed between New York in October 1979 and the first race in March 1981; exact meeting dates are not published and are not given here.
The first race in 1981: Beardsley, Simonsen and Joyce Smith
The 1981 race started from Greenwich Park and Blackheath, the same corner of south-east London that the race uses now, and finished on Constitution Hill. The field was larger than anyone running British road races at the time was used to. Around 20,000 people applied, 7,747 were accepted, roughly 7,055 started and 6,255 finished, which tells you both how far ahead of British road-running practice the event was and that the organisers had accepted more entrants than they expected to see on the line.
Beardsley and Simonsen ran together through the closing stages. Nobody has given a fully consistent account of who suggested crossing the line together, and both men told the story slightly differently over the years, but the result is not in doubt: a dead heat by agreement, 2:11:48 for each. It was a decent time on a new course in poor conditions, and it gave the race its first photograph.
The women's race went to Joyce Smith. She was 43, had started running marathons only in her late thirties after a track career, and finished in 2:29:57, a British record. She came back in 1982 and won again in 2:29:43. There was still no women's marathon at the Olympic Games, and there would not be one until Los Angeles in 1984; two London wins by a British woman in her forties, run in front of a television audience, made the case for the event better than most committee papers did.
Millions watched on television, and that, more than the result, is what made 1981 matter. A great many of the people who applied the following year had never run a road race before and had made up their minds on the sofa.
Gillette and the Constitution Hill finish
Gillette's name went on the first three races. The sponsorship was not large by later standards, and it bought what a new event needed most, which was the credibility to sign contracts with barrier hire firms and broadcasters. The Constitution Hill finish was chosen because it delivered a royal backdrop and a wide road. It lasted one edition. Building work at Constitution Hill forced a change for 1982, and the finish moved across to Westminster Bridge.
London before 1981: 1908, Windsor and the Polytechnic Marathon
The marathon distance itself is a London invention. At the 1908 Olympic Games the course was laid out from the grounds of Windsor Castle to the stadium at White City, and the finish was placed in front of the royal box. That produced a race of 26 miles and 385 yards. It took until 1921 for the international federation to fix that as the standard distance, which today is written as 42.195 kilometres, and the London Marathon nods to the old figure with a sign on the final stretch telling runners they have only 385 yards to go.
The 1908 race is remembered for Dorando Pietri, the Italian who entered the stadium first, collapsed more than once on the track and was helped across the line by officials. He was disqualified, and the gold went to Johnny Hayes of the United States. Queen Alexandra presented Pietri with a gilded silver cup the following day.
A year later the Polytechnic Harriers, the running club of the Regent Street Polytechnic, started an annual marathon over a version of the Windsor route. The Poly, as runners called it, was London's marathon for most of the twentieth century. It was a serious race for serious club athletes, run on roads that were open to traffic for much of their length. Jim Peters set world bests on it in the early 1950s, at a time when the marathon was a minority pursuit followed by athletics correspondents and almost nobody else.
| Race | Years | Route | What it was |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1908 Olympic marathon | 1908 | Windsor Castle to White City | Set the distance of 26 miles 385 yards |
| Polytechnic Marathon | From 1909 into the 1990s | Windsor towards west London | Annual club race; Jim Peters's world bests in the 1950s |
| 1948 Olympic marathon | 1948 | Out and back from Wembley | London's second Olympic marathon |
| London Marathon | From 1981 | Greenwich and Blackheath to central London | Mass race on closed roads |
The difference between the Poly and what Brasher proposed was not distance or course quality. It was the closed road, and with it the idea that a marathon could belong to the public. The Poly could never have taken six thousand people through Windsor's traffic. The London Marathon was designed around taking the traffic away.
The 1980s boom and the British men who won London
Applications multiplied after the first race was shown on television. The organisers could not take everyone who applied, and from early on the field was set by the capacity of the start, the width of the roads and the time the police could hold them closed, not by demand. A ballot became the fairest way to share the places out. How that draw works now, and how it has changed, is the subject of our ballot guide.
The decade also belonged to British distance runners in a way no later one has. A British man won London in six of the first thirteen years.
| Year | Winner | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Hugh Jones | First outright British winner, 2:09:24 |
| 1983 | Mike Gratton | 2:09:43, a race that also served as the AAA championship |
| 1984 | Charlie Spedding | Went on to win Olympic bronze at Los Angeles that summer |
| 1985 | Steve Jones | 2:08:16, a course record |
| 1990 | Allister Hutton | Scottish winner, the only British victory between 1986 and 1992 |
| 1993 | Eamonn Martin | Won on his marathon debut, still the last British winner of the men's race |
Spedding's win is the one with the best story attached. He arrived at London in 1984 as a man with no international reputation, won, and then took Olympic bronze in Los Angeles. Steve Jones was a Royal Air Force technician who ran with almost no concession to fashion and very little to pacing, and his 1985 London win came a few months after he had set a world best in Chicago.
Eamonn Martin's win in 1993 has turned into a piece of trivia because of what followed. Thirty years of elite East African and Ethiopian running, and the money that came with it, meant no British man won London again. Mo Farah ran London several times, set a British record there in 2018 and never won it.
How big the field could be made
The 1980s question was not whether people wanted to run but how many London's roads could take. The start in Greenwich Park and on Blackheath could hold only so many runners before the first mile became a walk. The organisers dealt with it by splitting the start between separate lines that merge after a few miles, an arrangement that has been extended and reorganised many times since and is described on our London Marathon route page. A larger finish area and better baggage arrangements followed. Each improvement let a few thousand more in.
The women's race: Smith, Waitz, Kristiansen, McColgan and Radcliffe
London's women's race has a stronger claim to world importance than the men's, at least for its first quarter-century. That is mostly the work of two Norwegians and one woman from Cheshire.
Grete Waitz won in 1983 in 2:25:29, a world best on the day, which lasted roughly twenty-four hours before Joan Benoit ran faster in Boston. She won again in 1986. Waitz had already turned the New York City Marathon into her own property, and her presence told the world's best women that London was a race worth travelling to.
Ingrid Kristiansen then won four times, in 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1988. Her 1985 run of 2:21:06 was a world record and lasted thirteen years. Kristiansen held world records on the track and the road at the same time, and London was where she showed what that range meant over 26.2 miles.
British women kept their hold on the race longer than British men did. Véronique Marot won in 1989 and set a British record. Liz McColgan won in 1996, the Scot having already been world 10,000 metres champion. Then came Paula Radcliffe.
Radcliffe won London three times, in 2002, 2003 and 2005. The middle one was 2:15:25, a world record that stood for sixteen years and is still the women's course record at the time of writing, after the 2026 race. The circumstances of that run, with male pacemakers in the field, and the later argument about whether mixed-race marks should count, belong on our London Marathon course records page, which sets them out in full.
The elite women's race was eventually given a separate, earlier start, so the leading women run with a clear road and without men around them. That decision, more than any individual result, has shaped what London means for women's marathon running since, because it made the race the natural place to set the separate category of women-only records.
The wheelchair race, the Mini London Marathon and the fields inside the event
The marathon became several races quite quickly. In 1983 a wheelchair race was added, won by Gordon Perry and Denise Smith, after an argument that had to be won with the founders and the authorities. It has since produced some of Britain's most successful athletes. David Weir won it eight times and Tanni Grey-Thompson six. Its rules, its chairs and the reasons the wheelchair races start first are explained in our guide to the London Marathon wheelchair race.
The Mini London Marathon came next, giving young athletes a short race over the final stretch of the course. It has been used at different times as the venue for schools and regional team competitions, and in some years as an English championship for age groups. Many of the British athletes who went on to win senior international medals ran it as teenagers. It is the race's most direct contribution to the second of the six aims, and probably the least noticed.
Inside the mass event there are other fields, each with its own entry route:
- the elite men's and women's races, by invitation;
- a British championship field, made up of club athletes who meet a qualifying standard and start behind the elites;
- Good For Age entrants, who earn a place with a fast time for their age and sex;
- charity runners, who take places allocated to charities;
- and the ballot field.
The national championship sits inside London more often than not. By 1983 the race was already doubling as the AAA marathon title, and selection for British teams has regularly turned on results here. The current qualifying standards are covered on the championship entry page and the age-graded route on the Good For Age one.
The moving finish: Constitution Hill, Westminster Bridge, The Mall
The start has stayed in the same part of south-east London throughout: Greenwich Park and Blackheath, on the high ground above the river. The finish has moved twice.
Constitution Hill was the finish in 1981 only. From 1982 runners finished on Westminster Bridge, with the Palace of Westminster as the backdrop, and they did so for twelve editions to 1993. In 1994 repair work to Westminster Bridge forced another move, and the finish came to The Mall. It has stayed there since, and the run along Birdcage Walk, round the Victoria Memorial and down The Mall towards Admiralty Arch is now what most people picture when the race is mentioned.
The Mall finish suits the organisers better than either predecessor did. It is wide, it is closed to traffic on Sundays as a matter of course, and the royal parks on either side provide space for the finish area, baggage collection and the reunion points that a field of tens of thousands needs. Westminster Bridge had none of those advantages and the bridge itself limited the width of the finishing funnel.
The middle of the course has moved more often. Docklands has been rebuilt beneath the route several times, the cobbled stretch near the Tower of London at around 22 miles was dropped in 2005 in favour of a faster run along The Highway and Tower Hill, and the passage through Canary Wharf grew as the estate did. A runner from 1981 would recognise the opening and the end.
An era per sponsor: Gillette to TCS
The race has always carried a sponsor's name. Each deal brought money, and each changed what people called the race, which is why older runners still refer to "the Flora" or "the ADT".
| Sponsor | Editions | Race name in use |
|---|---|---|
| Gillette | 1981 to 1983 | Gillette London Marathon |
| Mars | 1984 to 1988 | Mars London Marathon |
| ADT | 1989 to 1992 | ADT London Marathon |
| NutraSweet | 1993 to 1995 | NutraSweet London Marathon |
| Flora | 1996 to 2009 | Flora London Marathon |
| Virgin | 2010 to 2012 | Virgin London Marathon |
| Virgin Money | 2013 to 2021 | Virgin Money London Marathon |
| TCS | From 2022 | TCS London Marathon |
The Flora years were the longest and the most important. A margarine brand built a heart-health message around the race and, with it, the idea that running a marathon was a reasonable thing for a middle-aged office worker to attempt. Those fourteen editions coincided with the elite race's biggest records, Khannouchi's men's world record and Radcliffe's 2:15:25, and with the explosion of charity fundraising.
The Virgin years brought the race online in the way runners now take for granted, with fundraising pages tied to the entry, and the deal with Virgin Money made fundraising totals a headline figure of each edition. Tata Consultancy Services took over from 2022, and its era has been marked by record ballots and the largest fields the race has staged.
The scale of the money changed as much as the names did. Gillette's fee for the first race was reported at £75,000, a figure that bought a new event its credibility rather than an elite field, and the sums rose through the Mars years as the television audience did. Later deals have not been disclosed in full, so no figure for them is given here. What can be said is that the elite budget, appearance fees and time bonuses that brought world record holders to London all depended on the title deal.
The record years: Khannouchi, Radcliffe, Kipchoge and the women-only marks
London became a record course in the early 2000s, after two decades as a fast race that rarely produced world-class times.
Khalid Khannouchi ran 2:05:38 in 2002 to break the men's world record, beating Paul Tergat and Haile Gebrselassie in one of the best men's fields the race has assembled. Radcliffe's 2003 run followed a year later. Then came Eliud Kipchoge, who won in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019, the last in 2:02:37, a course record at the time. Kelvin Kiptum lowered it to 2:01:25 in 2023.
Kipchoge's wins are worth a sentence of their own. Four London titles sit beside the four of Kristiansen as the most in either elite running race, and his London races were the closest thing the event has had to a reliable annual fixture at the top end.
The women's race after Radcliffe produced a different kind of record. When World Athletics decided that a women's road record set in a mixed race should be listed separately from one set in a women-only race, London's separate elite women's start meant its times sat in the women-only list. Mary Keitany ran 2:17:01 in 2017. Peres Jepchirchir ran 2:16:16 in 2024. Tigst Assefa improved it in 2025 and again in 2026, to 2:15:41.
The men's record went further still. In 2026 Sabastian Sawe ran 1:59:30, the first marathon under two hours in open competition. A race founded with "a fast course" at the top of its aims had produced the fastest time ever run. The full progression of both records, and what each one replaced, is on the course records page.
A founder of the World Marathon Majors and the largest fundraising day in the world
In 2006 the organisers of five big-city marathons, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York, formed the World Marathon Majors. The series gave the elite races a points competition with a prize at the end of each cycle, and for amateur runners it created the idea of collecting all the Majors. Tokyo joined in 2013. Sydney followed after a candidacy process and was first run as a Major in 2025.
London's place in that group was never in question. By 2006 it had the strongest elite fields of any spring marathon and the biggest television audience in Europe.
The other thing it had was money for causes. Raising money for charities was not one of Brasher and Disley's aims, but runners started fundraising almost immediately, and by the late 1980s it was a defining feature of the race. Charities bought guaranteed places, first in small numbers and later through the bond system described on our charity places page. Fundraising totals rose as entry did.
| Measure | Figure | When |
|---|---|---|
| Raised since the first race | More than £1.3 billion | As stated by London Marathon Events in 2026 |
| Raised at a single race | £87.3 million | 2025 race; the 2026 edition passed it, with £87.5 million counted by that May |
| Finishers | 59,830 | 2026 race, a Guinness World Record for the largest marathon |
| Ballot applications | 1,133,813 | Ballot for the 2026 race |
| Registered participants | 66,393 | 2026 race, from 173 countries |
The 2025 total of £87.3 million was recognised by Guinness World Records as the most raised by an annual single-day fundraising event anywhere, and the 2026 race broke that record in turn. Every one of these numbers is tied to its year because each has been broken more than once, and the next edition may break them again.
2020 and after: the St James's Park laps, three autumns and the return to April
The 2020 race was due on 26 April. By the middle of March it was clear that a mass event could not take place, and the organisers postponed it to 4 October. By the summer it was clear that a mass event could not take place in October either.
What happened instead was the strangest London Marathon of all. The elite men's, women's and wheelchair races were held on a closed loop around St James's Park, inside a biosecure bubble, with athletes isolated in a hotel beforehand. The runners covered 19.6 laps of the loop and finished on The Mall. There were almost no spectators. Shura Kitata of Ethiopia won the men's race, outsprinting a field that included Kipchoge, who finished eighth and well off his usual form in the cold. Brigid Kosgei won the women's race.
Everyone else ran a virtual marathon. Entrants downloaded an app, covered 26.2 miles on a route of their own choosing within a single day, and were sent a medal. The Ever Presents ran it too, which kept their streak alive and was one reason the organisers treated the virtual event as a proper edition rather than a gesture.
- April 2020The spring race is postponed as the pandemic closes mass events
- October 2020Elite-only race on laps of St James's Park, virtual marathon for everyone else
- October 2021Mass race returns on the normal course, with a staggered start to spread the field
- October 2022A third autumn edition while the calendar is rebuilt
- April 2023The race returns to its spring date
- 2025 and 2026Record finishers, then a record registered field
- 2027A one-off two-day edition on the same course
The sequence of editions after the April 2020 date was lost; the 2027 two-day format is announced as a one-off.
The mass race returned on 3 October 2021, on the normal course, with a staggered start that spread the field over a longer period. It was held in October once more in 2022 because the spring calendar had not yet been put back together. In April 2023 the race returned to its traditional slot.
What has happened since is growth, and the record for the largest marathon has changed hands repeatedly within it. London's 56,640 finishers in 2025 set it; the New York City Marathon took it that November with 59,226; London took it back in April 2026 with 59,830. The ballot for 2026 drew 1,133,813 applications, a total that would have been unthinkable to the organisers who handled postal forms in 1980. The answer for 2027 has been to run the race over two days, on Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 April, with a combined field of around 100,000 runners over the same course. The organisers have said the two-day format is for that year only.
What the founders would recognise
The start on Blackheath. The finish by the palace. The insistence on a fast course and the idea that the public belongs on the same road as the best runners in the world. Brasher died in 2003 and Disley in 2016, Disley long enough to see the race settled among the World Marathon Majors. Of the six aims, the fast course has done best. The sixth, fun and a sense of achievement in a troubled world, is the one most runners would say they came for.
For British runners looking for other big road races with their own histories, the Great North Run is London's nearest domestic equivalent and has its own founding story. Precision about distance runs through all of it, which is why our explainer on how a marathon course is measured is worth reading alongside this one. Broader coverage of the sport is on the athletics hub, and the rest of our English sport guides start from the England section.