Events
Being the most prominent open space in the city, the Marina Beach hosts several events throughout the year. The annual Independence Day and the Republic Day ceremonial parades and airshows are held along the promenade along with the unfurling of the national flag in the Marina. The annual idol-immersion event following the Hindu festival of Vinayaka Chathurthi takes place at the beach where most of the idols of Lord Ganesh kept on display during the festival in the city is immersed into the sea. The event occurs in the month of August–September. The beach is also the venue for several marathon and walkathon campaigns throughout the year conducted for various cause.
The beach receives the maximum number of visitors on the Kannum Pongal day, a day in the festival season of Pongal in mid-January, when about 150,000 people come to the beach.
The annual Chennai Marathon is held in the beach starting from the Anna Square to Annai Velankanni Church on the Elliot's Beach in Besant Nagar. It is India's biggest city marathon and is also said to be South India's richest marathon, in which over 1,000 athletes and more than a million people participate, which includes various categories such as a 21-km run for professional athletes, a city run for everybody, a junior run for children, a master's run for senior citizens and a wheelchair run for the disabled.
In 2008, the beach played host to India's first International Beach Volleyball Championship, BSNL FIVB Chennai Challenger:2008, from July 15 to 20 to popularize beach volleyball. The event was organized by the Beach Volleyball Club and was sponsored by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. Eleven Indian teams along with 60 teams from 21 countries participated in the 6-day-long tournament offering a total prize money of US$40,000 in the men's and US$6,400 in the women's events.
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Famous quotes containing the word events:
“There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“At all events there is in Brooklyn
something that makes me feel at home.”
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)
““The ideal reasoner,” he remarked, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)