Growth and Prestige
For the first race, in 1925, 60 people filled applications to participate, but only 48 actually showed up on the day of the race. Of these, only 37 were officially qualified, since the rules then required that all runners had to finish within 3 minutes of the winner in order to qualify in the final board.
In 2004, 13,000 men and 2,000 women participated in their respective events.
Although the event had been open since 1945, it would become a noteworthy affair in the international calendar only in 1953, when the most famous runner of the time (and arguably of all time), Emil Zátopek, participated and won the race. In recent times, the foremost long distance runners of the last two decades (almost all of them, with the exception of Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia) have participated at least once in the event.
The principal winner of all times is now Paul Tergat, of Kenya, who has won the race 5 times (1995, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000). He also holds the record time for the present distance of 15 km, having won his very first race in São Paulo with a time of 43 minutes and 12 seconds.
Read more about this topic: Saint Silvester Road Race
Famous quotes containing the words growth and, growth and/or prestige:
“The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)