Dispatches Friday 9th April - London Marathon

claralara

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-58/episode-1

Just saw an ad for this and thought people might have an interest / like to watch it while waiting for the late late show to start! It's on on friday night at 8pm on channel 4. Might be a load of rubbish, might be worth the watch!

robinph

Reminder for anyone lurking, this is on now.

donothoponpop

Pretty interesting, charities pay the London Marathon holding company 300 pounds for every place, the Holding Company is a part of the whole London Marathon Charity, which is less than forthcoming about where it spends and allocates its money. Bottom line was about 20p of every pound raised by runners, actually gets spent on charitable endevours.

That's one hell of a business model, and further proof that the races which dangle a "charity" carrot need to be tackled on their bona fides.

robinph

I think they were trying to make out more of a scandal than there really was.

The 20p from every pound but was only from that 300 that the charity that you were running for paid to get you the place, the rest of the money you give to the charity goes to the charity. Just only 20% of the money that London Marathon Charity gets comes back out of the pot to other real charitys again.

They should release control of what charities get access to the entries so that it rotates around a bit more fairly. Give a set amount to which ever the "named" charities for that years race are, but all the rest should be shared out newly each year to whichever charities applied. Have a ballot for the charities to get places the same way that the regular entries do, but unless that charity is one of the main title ones they don't then get any places the following year and just have to rely on regular entrants raising money for them.

ecoli

Couple of articles to try get the other side of this argument

http://www.letsrun.com/2010/londonstatement0408.php

http://insidethegames.biz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9376:london-marathon-taking-legal-action-over-channel-4-programme&catid=89:athletics-news&Itemid=119

http://www.letsrun.com/2010/london0408.php