Fol­low­ing the re­cent con­clu­sion of a suc­cess­ful host­ing of the 41st edi­tion of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon, Di­ane Hen­der­son, the chair­woman of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon (TTIM) says plans are al­ready afoot for an im­proved 2024 stag­ing of the event on Jan­u­ary 21, next year.

This was stat­ed by Hen­der­son at a me­dia brief­ing held to dis­trib­ute spe­cial prizes for this year's event at the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee’s (TTOC) head of­fice, Wood­ford Street, Port-of-Spain on Mon­day.

Last month, St Lu­cian Ja­son Say­ers and Shardie Ma­habir cap­tured the men’s and women’s ti­tles of the 26.2 miles T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon which was con­test­ed over a new course.

Last year, the run­ners be­gan at St Mary’s Junc­tion in Freeport and head­ed north to the fin­ish line at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. How­ev­er, this year’s route saw the run­ners nav­i­gate the streets of Port-of-Spain, be­fore head­ing east on­to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) to Rail­way Road, Arou­ca, be­fore mak­ing a U-turn and re­turn­ing to the fin­ish line at the QP Sa­van­nah.

Speak­ing at the me­dia brief­ing on Mon­day, Hen­der­son, pres­i­dent of the TTOC stat­ed that as usu­al the event will be held two weeks pri­or to the 2024 Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions and "a week pri­or to the Panora­ma semi­fi­nals which we must stay clear of, and we im­me­di­ate­ly want to get the ball rolling ear­ly so things can be bet­ter and im­proved".

For­mer TTOC pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis who heads the TTOC’s fund-rais­ing com­mit­tee al­so praise the TTIM for an­nounc­ing the date of next year's event at this ear­ly stage.

"It will give the marathon com­mit­tee a longer time to con­duct the mar­ket­ing of the event,” said Lewis, the cur­rent Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (CANOC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary.

How­ev­er, Lewis al­so ex­pressed his dis­plea­sure with the lack of sup­port the event is be­ing giv­en and said, "We all have to look at how we can make this event bet­ter as there is on­ly one marathon. Oth­ers have tried, the fact that the marathon has gone on for 41 years with­out the nec­es­sary sup­port, every year the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and Min­istry of Works and Trans­port they treat the marathon as nui­sance val­ue.

“It is a dis­rup­tion to peo­ple’s day and that is not true if peo­ple ral­ly around the marathon and see it for what it could be for the coun­try, see what it could do to bat­tle obe­si­ty and non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.

"The Min­istry of Tourism and Health should get in­volved and peo­ple will un­der­stand that all you are be­ing asked to do is give up a cou­ple of hours for a com­mon good. I would like to ask every­body to put their heads to­geth­er and work to­wards mak­ing the 42nd marathon, the Car­ni­val marathon big­ger, bet­ter, brighter,” said Lewis.

One way of in­creas­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pat­ing field for the TTIM is via the pro­mo­tion of the event on in­ter­na­tion­al fo­rums like the World Marathon and the French Le Sportif.

How­ev­er, race di­rec­tor Fran­cis Williams-Smith point­ed out that con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to in­creased prize mon­ey and how to se­cure such.

William-Smith said, "One of the things that mat­ter is prize mon­ey for the in­ter­na­tion­al run­ners and prize mon­ey has to do with US dol­lars and we in T&T are very cog­nisant of the fact that there are cur­ren­cy re­stric­tions and so there is a big chal­lenge where we can cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion where we can af­ford to pay in the prize-mon­ey for the for­eign­ers who ex­pect that.”

He added, "In­creased prize mon­ey was al­so con­tin­gent on spon­sor­ship, and we have to get cor­po­rate T&T more in­volved in the sup­port for the marathon, quite apart from Min­istry of Works and the Po­lice, so those are fun­da­men­tals I think in go­ing for­ward and with that kind of sup­port from the ser­vices, it feeds in­to the sup­port ser­vices on the road for the run­ners and at the end for the par­ty (and) the cel­e­bra­tions.”