The Dublin Women's Mini Marathon (known currently as the Flora Women's Mini Marathon due to a title sponsorship deal with Flora margarine) is an annual charity road race that occurs each June bank holiday Monday in Ireland. The event is an all-female mini marathon over 10 km in the country's capital, Dublin.
First run in 1983, this event has seen its numbers rise through the years, with 31,000 women recorded racing in 2001 and, for the sixth consecutive year, upwards of 40,000 women participating in the most recent mini-marathon on 1 June 2009. Those to have won the race include Kenya's Magdaline Chemjor and Irish Olympic silver medalist, Sonia O'Sullivan, whose 2000 record time of 31 minutes and 28 seconds has yet to be beaten. Over €123 million has been raised for charity and a total of over half a million women have run the race, some doing so each year since the beginning.
It is the biggest single day charity event in Ireland and the biggest all-female event of its type in the world. Similar events in the UK and US attract only half these figures.
Read more about Dublin Women's Mini Marathon: History, Sponsorship, Preparation, Notable Winners, Television Coverage
Famous quotes containing the words marathon and/or women:
“The mountains look on Marathon—
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The empowerment of black women constitutes ... the empowerment of our entire community.”
—Kimberly Crenshaw (b. 1959)