Galway City Marathon Cancelled

acurno

Seems like the city council took the decision after massive complaints from motorists and businesses about road closures for two consecutive weekends. Ironman gets preference....

http://www.galwaycitymarathon.com/news/16/77/Cancellation-of-2011-Galway-City-Marathon.html

Shame really, I didn't participate last year but was hoping to run this year. Really could do with a city marathon here in Galway. Just shows the attitude in this city to runners and cyclists.

ThisRegard

Galway City Council and the mayor come across as pretty shameful in that article.

Mollie Breathna

acurno wrote: »

Seems like the city council took the decision after massive complaints from motorists and businesses about road closures for two consecutive weekends. Ironman gets preference....
QUOTE]

How did you arrive at that conclusion?
That rant throws blame all over the place. Has it occurred to you that the marathon organisers couldn't get their s**t together and that's why it's cancelled?

Head The Wall

Mollie Breathna wrote: »

How did you arrive at that conclusion?
That rant throws blame all over the place. Has it occurred to you or any of the other trolls that the marathon organisers couldn't get their s**t together and that's why it's cancelled?

It's going to be hard to apportion blame here as the Galway city councillors are a useless bunch of self serving muppets

ronanmac

Another take on it by Galway City Council...

Wednesday, 3rd August 2011
Statement from Mr Ciarán Hayes, Director of Services,Galway City Council regarding the cancellation of Galway City Marathon


“The organisers of the Galway City Marathon, Half-Marathon and Mini-Marathon have cancelled the event scheduled for 28th August. I was disappointed to hear this news, as I believe that such an event would be of benefit to the city as an annual event on the national athletics calendar.

Officials of the Transport & Infrastructure Department have been working with the organisers over the last year following on from the inaugural event in 2010 as we were keen to learn the lessons from that event particularly in respect of the traffic management and marshalling issues that arose.

As you know, Galway City Council engages with the organisers of a multiplicity of events ranging from the Galway Races, the Macnas Parade, cycling events, nearly-weekly charity walks and fun-runs along The Promenade in Salthill up to major international events such as the forthcoming Ironman 70.3.
At all times, Galway City Council works to ensure the safety of participants and of others in the city; that stakeholders are adequately informed of proposed disruption and that adequate Traffic Management Plans are in place to ensure that the city as a whole can continue to function while events are underway. It should also be noted that the closure of roads is a statutory obligation under the Roads Act.
While the Council has engaged intensively with the organisers of Galway City Marathon over the last number of months, it is disappointing that the organisers have not been in a position to submit an adequate Traffic Management Plan for the event. It should be noted that the Council did express its concerns about these logistical issues at the start of July and provided assistance and advice regarding the quality of information required for the Plan.

The organisers informed Galway City Council on 22nd July that they were cancelling the Marathon and Half-Marathon. We understand that they informed registered athletes yesterday (2nd August) of the cancellation of the entire event, including the Mini-Marathon.

It is unfortunate and regrettable that the organisers were unable to arrange all that was required to make the event happen this year. However, I look forward to collaborating with them in future ventures. We hope that in the future a Marathon can be organised in Galway as a welcome addition to annual menu of events in the city.”

Aiel

I did the half marathon part of it(one lap of the course) last year and there was alot of issues with traffic etc.Long traffic tailbacks as the runners made their way through junctions,kids acting as stewards and so motorists ignoring them and driving straight through "closed" sections of roads and nearly knocking down several of the runners ahead of me.The organisers did acknowledge that there were some traffic issues after it and had made course changes etc for this years race.Galway is'nt exactly ideally set up to host a marathon but other cities in Ireland,Dublin,Belfast and Cork have shown that with proper plans in place a very successfull event can be held that brings in people and money to the city.

Oisin11178

Longford is on the same day. More established marathon without the bells and whistles. Highly recommend it.

elvis jones

I do remember a lot of complaints here last yr about the half !

ger664

ronanmac wrote: »

The organisers informed Galway City Council on 22nd July that they were cancelling the Marathon and Half-Marathon. We understand that they informed registered athletes yesterday (2nd August) of the cancellation of the entire event, including the Mini-Marathon.

Would like to know why they still where taking entries on 30th of July.

doctorchick

ger664 wrote: »

Would like to know why they still where taking entries on 30th of July.

Think this probably explains why http://www.galwaycitymarathon.com/news/17/77/Response-to-Galway-City-Council-Statement.html

Looks as if they were planning on moving to an 'out of city' location. Interesting to note that the domain owner of galwaycitymarathon.com also owns clifdenmarathon.com (registered 8th May 2011) - coincidence, or are they planning on hosting a marathon in Clifden ?

DC

ultraman1

dats a pity ,was lookin forward to runnin around galway city

groovyg

See it made the nine o clock news!

mloc123

I seem to remeber last years race being a disaster? Pretty detailed thread on here with lots of unhappy people iirc.

<mod>snip!</mod>

tunney

I think we have seen from recent ART events threads that there are two types of organisers. The ones that care about quality of events and competitor experience and pull out all the stops to deliver quality events (and make some money in the process), and the other kind. Seem to be very few of the former.

ger664

doctorchick wrote: »

Think this probably explains why http://www.galwaycitymarathon.com/news/17/77/Response-to-Galway-City-Council-Statement.html

Looks as if they were planning on moving to an 'out of city' location.
DC

After the 22nd of July and up until 2nd of August the website was offering registration for an event to be run over a course as original outlined. In this time frame the organisers knew that they never where going to be in a position to run the event as advertised. They should have stopped taking anymore entries until they had resolved that issue.

I do not care who is to blame here but its the people and business of Galway who are losing out in this debacle. As regards traffic management plan, you cannot run a sizable marathon without road closures and especially one ran in a city.

tunney

So this years race was cancelled in a farcical fashion and last years race seems to have been a disaster? Who is the race organiser so I can know to avoid their races?

ThisRegard

You obviously haven't read any of the links in this thread, they organised the trail world championships recently which by all accounts here was done well.

http://m.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056285789&page=4

doctorchick

tunney wrote: »

So this years race was cancelled in a farcical fashion and last years race seems to have been a disaster? Who is the race organiser so I can know to avoid their races?

The Galway City Marathon is now operated by Running Adventures Ireland Ltd. T/A Galway City Marathon - Paul and Richard Donovan I believe.

mloc123

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055840501

Last years thread, it gets interesting about 5 pages in. I love the quote from some of the 'organisers', something along the lines of 'its not like anyone died'

There you have it, providing nobody dies it was a good race :pac:

ThisRegard

mloc, it appears to be different organisers this year unless I've misunderstood doctorchicks post.

doctorchick

ThisRegard wrote: »

mloc, it appears to be different organisers this year unless I've misunderstood doctorchicks post.

Sorry, reading my post and the 'now' part might have caused confusion. This was just a direct copy from the GCM website. It was the same organisers as last year.

mloc123

ThisRegard wrote: »

mloc, it appears to be different organisers this year unless I've misunderstood doctorchicks post.

The person I mentioned in my first post, since snipped, was the organiser last year and he was the one on the 9 o'clock news tonight..

ThisRegard

So I did misunderstand. Anyway, comments don't really match up with the reports on the trails hence me believing they're different organisers. I did neither so can only comment on what I've read.

tunney

doctorchick wrote: »

The Galway City Marathon is now operated by Running Adventures Ireland Ltd. T/A Galway City Marathon - Paul and Richard Donovan I believe.

Thanks, good to know. Never heard of them. Still alo of people just popping up organizing races these days.

dna_leri

mloc123 wrote: »

The person I mentioned in my first post, since snipped, was the organiser last year and he was the one on the 9 o'clock news tonight..

"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named"

I notice none of the PR statements on the website are signed either, though the Galway City Council Director of Services was happy to put his name on the end his statement.

RayCun

<mod>
There is no ban on naming race organisers on this thread, or anywhere else. Personal attacks are a different story.
If you want to play a game of tiptoeing up to that line.... well, the 'Bad Cop mod' position is still up for grabs. Maybe this thread will be where it is claimed.
</mod>

Incremental

In my view it is the Council that come out of this badly, any event that brings people to the city should be encouraged. In their statement the organizers seem to have learned the lesson from last year in attempting to change the route and to hire security service to replace inexperienced volunteers.
I do think that they should have excluded the references to the Half Ironman in their statement, they had enough of case without bringing this event into it.

ultraman1

http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/42746/marathon-organisers-donated-thousands-of-euro-to-local-athletes-and-clubs-despite-claims-by-former-mayor......... http://www.galwayindependent.com/local-news/local-news/marathon-organisers-deny-funding-claims-20110810/...... http://www.galwayindependent.com/local-news/local-news/marathon-trip-20110810/.............................
bit of interestin reading here

Cabaal

Nothing to do with Galway, don't live there or have any dealings with the council and have only visited Galway a hand full of times.

After reading everything I have to say the council have come across very badly indeed, they should have done all they could to encourage such an event into Galway.

I understand that they are unhappy about traffic, have to say this appears to be little of a concern with the Galway races during which I needed to travel to Mayo and it took me 2hours to get approx 5km because of the races.

The races went for more then just a few hours on one day, yes it generates money for Galway city but so would a marathon and that would only be perhaps 6-7hours total.

Sadly a short sighted view by Galway City Council, thankfully Dublin have enough sense not to act like this