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Mumbai’s Dream Run

Jan 19, 2025 07:12 AM IST

Why does the Mumbai marathon matter? In its 20 years, it has turned running into a fitness goal, a business model, and a passion

The third Sunday of January is a day like no other in Mumbai. Runners from across the country – and international stars from around the globe – pound the city’s streets, chasing glory, validation, pride, new records and a test of their endurance.

Mumbai’s Dream Run
Mumbai’s Dream Run

It is also the day when the impossible happens – traffic disappears from South Bombay till lunch time, and the railways run special trains in the middle of the night for runners. This is the Mumbai Marathon, a beloved sporting ritual the city has been hosting for two decades.

In the 20 years since it was first flagged off, numbers have swelled from just a few thousand runners – barely a hundred for the Full Marathon (42.195 km), a little more for the Half Marathon (21 km) and a couple of thousand for the Dream Run (5.9 km). “I watched the first race and ran the second one. There were only a few hundred runners for the longer races in the early years,” says athletics coach and sprinter Ayesha Billimoria.

On Sunday, 60,000-odd participants will assemble at 5 am at the start line for the Tata Mumbai Marathon. It’s a milestone year for an event that kick-started the city’s love affair with distance running.

The Early Years

The early years weren’t a runaway success as creating awareness in a pre-social media world was difficult. Procam International, the promoters of the race, would publish advertisements in newspapers, advertise on billboards, and reach out to athletics coaches and schools to create awareness.

Getting sponsors and partners was also not easy. The first edition had just seven partners, while the 20th edition has 15, including Tata Sons, TCS, IDFC First Bank and Vedanta. The Dream Run became popular quickly, as celebrities and NGOs got involved. “The longer races drew bigger participation only after Reliance Group chairman Anil Ambani laced up for the Half Marathon,” says Bruno Goveas, former communications head at Procam International. “Anil Ambani was the biggest catalyst… the man responsible for the big surge. It was a turning point. People started training. Half Marathon numbers improved, while the Dream Run started getting swamped,” adds Goveas.

While NGOs have helped drive up participation, the runners themselves have done their bit to raise funds for charity as well. Since its inception, the Mumbai Marathon has raised a 429.60 crore. Last year, 268 NGOs raised a 72 crore for various causes, on race day.

Stars sweat it out too

The Mumbai Marathon is as much a part of the city’s cultural calendar as it is of its sporting calendar. After Ambani, several other India Inc leaders, entrepreneurs, filmstars and government officials have become regulars at the event. Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran has run this race at least five times. Former governor of the Reserve Bank of India Raghuram Rajan, Reliance Brands president and CEO Darshan Mehta, former Viacom18 MD and Group CEO and MD-designate at Pidilite Industries Sudhanshu Vats, Sammaan Capital (formerly Indiabulls) vice-chairman and managing director Gagan Banga, ed-tech start-up UpGrad’s co-founder and managing director Mayank Kumar, and actors Farhan Akhtar, Rahul Bose, Gul Panag and Milind Soman have all run this race.

Sugar Cosmetics’ CEO and co-founder Vineeta Singh participated for the first time in 2007; she opted to run the Full Marathon. Singh was studying at IIM-Ahmedabad then. “It was my first race ever and it changed my life. To train for it, I had to do all my long runs in the middle of the night as we had classes all day.”

Singh said she drew strength from the cheering crowds. “Every time I would start walking because I thought my legs would give way, the cheering would get louder. I completed the race in 5 hours and 6 minutes,” says Singh, who ran the Half Marathon in 2018, six months pregnant. On Sunday, she will run her 14th Full Marathon in Mumbai.

The Mumbai Marathon is now the crown jewel of India’s races, Singh notes, but there’s one thing that remains unchanged and it’s the energy on the streets. “Mumbaiites, from ages 2 to 90, show up in large numbers, from 5 am to 11 am, to lift the spirits of tired runners and make sure that everyone who participates feels like a winner.”

Impact beyond city limits

The Mumbai Marathon is not only an iconic sporting event in India, it launched the running movement in the country, believes Vivek Singh, joint managing director, Procam International. It has also changed lives, encouraging people, participants as well as others, to focus on health and fitness.

It was a life-changing event for me back in 2009, when I ran my first-ever race, the Half Marathon, while working with the Hindustan Times in Kolkata. I suffered, cramped, limped and walked to the finish line. But I came back the next year and went at it again. I kept at it and ended up being nominated as an official pacer, helping other runners meet their times.

Inspired by the success and popularity of the Tata Mumbai Marathon, races and running clubs started sprouting everywhere. Today, there are more than 1,500 races in India, according to a 2023 International Institute of Sports and Management impact report. A significant number of people across the country have taken to running and several fitness and running-related start-ups are thriving in India. Even those who don’t identify as runners are quick to admit that the fitness bug that bit them can be traced back to this event.

The Mumbai Marathon has also played a part in preparing athletes for the Olympics. Past winners of the Indian elite men’s marathon, Nitendra Singh Rawat and Gopi Thonakal, raced each other here before representing India in the marathon at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Steeplechaser Sudha Singh, who finished in the top 10 at the Rio Olympics, has won the Indian elite women’s marathon here three times.

Professionally organised elite races such as the Mumbai Marathon are crucial for professional athletes as they help them get competition-ready. Based on their performance in such events, they tweak their training ahead of big-ticket competitions. With India keen to bid for the 2036 Olympics, the public’s increased enthusiasm for fitness and sports beyond cricket needs to rub off on city planners and policy-makers.

Urgent upgrade needed

In the two decades since the Mumbai Marathon was inaugurated, there have been some improvements but nowhere near enough to make our roads safe for runners, walkers and cyclists. An 18-year-old runner died and his brother was injured after being hit by a car in Andheri last year. In March 2023, Rajalakshmi Ramkrishnan, CEO of Altruist Technologies, an IT company, died after she was hit by a speeding car in Worli while training for the London Marathon. Despite the surge in numbers of people exercising, running, walking and cycling in open spaces, adequate infrastructure has not been put in place to make our cities safe or conducive for runners.

And it’s not just Mumbai. Praveen Giriya said Chennai Runners is a group that is growing. The local marathon is gaining popularity but all training has to be done on the roads amid speeding cars, he said. Hyderabad Runners co-founder and race director of the NMDC Hyderabad Marathon, Raj Vetcha, says running in India is like an adventure sport. “If the potholes or open drains don’t get you, cars, buses, bikes or stray dogs might. Hyderabad, like the rest of India, is not at all safe for running. Yet the number of runners is growing,” he said.

All the big metros, including Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad, have just a handful of public places that people can walk or run in safely. Our roads need to be safer for long-distance runners to train and improve, Giriya and Vetcha say.

According to a Ministry of Road Transport and Highways report in 2019, there were 4.49 lakh road accidents leading to 1.51 lakh deaths, making Indian roads the deadliest in the world. Pedestrians accounted for 17% and cyclists 3% of the fatalities in road crashes. Vetcha feels that as long as policy-makers don’t become end-users, we will not see any meaningful change to make our roads safer.

As the Mumbai Marathon strides into its third decade, it will, perhaps, inspire this change. Till that happens, Mumbai reserves the third Sunday of January as the day when everyone can run happily, without worrying about being hit by a vehicle.

Please add disclaimer at the end: Shrenik is an independent writer and editor

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