Sport
Biggest Marathon Survey: World is Faster
Running research center Runrepeat.com has completed the biggest marathon races survey, covering 2,195,588 results of global running competitions in a period from 2009 to 2014. It revealed that marathon running become more and more popular - worldwide average growth is +13.25%. Growth agents in terms of marathons popularity are women (+26.9% compared to men's +7.9% growth of participation) and Asian countries (+92.43% from 2009 to 2014).
Asia is a big surprise when it comes to runners' engagement. A growth from 2009 to 2014 of +92.43%, both men (+90.40%) and women (+97.80%). China's participation rate has increase 259.47%. In addition, India is picking up with a growth of 154.78%. The only Asian country in this research experiencing negative growth is South Korea (-21.88%).
Europe dominates in overall performance list with Span, Portugal and Iceland being the fastest nations in the world. From 2009 to 2014 there have been some changes in the performance. Some nations have become better while others worse. The nations that have improved the most are 1) Iceland (23:47 minutes faster), 2) Singapore (19:40 minutes faster) and 3) Denmark (16:30 minutes faster). China , Hong Kong and Ecuador are the nations that decreased the most in performance. Respectively, they became 33:38 minutes, 31:47 minutes and 19:48 minutes slower.
"This survey proves that sport now become more and more important to all nations over the globe, and overall results are improving with the fastest average finish time of 3:55:35 gained by Spain ," said Jens Jakob Andersen , leading researcher of Runrepeat.com.
Runrepeat.com is an independent running research center conducting surveys in area of marathons' running. Mr. Jens Jakob Andersen is a former competitive runner. In his previous career, he taught statistics at Copenhagen Business School. Then Mr. Andersen has decided to dedicate himself to development of RunRepeat.com.
Database of the survey covered 2,195,588 marathon races results from 2009 to 2014, which includes annual marathon races in Chicago, Marine, Boston , London , Paris , Berlin , Frankfurt , Athens , Amsterdam , Budapest , Warsaw and Madrid . Only non-professional marathon participants are counted, representing real level of marathon sport engagement from every nation.
pr@runrepeat.com
Alex Kisel
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