Sport Relief - Sport Relief Mile

Sport Relief Mile

The Sport Relief Mile was created to give the campaign a focus with an event that was open to anyone to run, walk, jog, wheel, bounce or crawl, regardless of ability or age. It was also designed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sir Roger Bannister's first sub-four minute mile. Participants can also choose to cover 3 miles or 6 miles (close to, but slightly shorter than, the 5K and 10K distances more commonly used in mass runs).

81,000 people took part in the first Sport Relief Mile, sponsored by Fitness First, in 2004. Sainsbury's is now the official sponsor of the Mile.

In 2006 more than 423,000 people took part in the Sport Relief Mile, making it one of the biggest mass participation events in history. The Sport Relief Mile Show on BBC1 on the morning of Saturday 15 July was presented by John Inverdale and Colin Jackson and drew an audience of almost a million with an 18% share.

Among the 20,000 participants who took part at London's Embankment were Lord Coe, Dame Kelly Holmes, Sportacus, McFly, Michael Watson, Tessa Sanderson, G4, Jamie Oliver and Sadie Frost.

Televised Miles were also held in Brighton, Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, Cardiff, Belfast, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle/Gateshead, Leeds, Hull, Nottingham, Birmingham and Ipswich.

Children from Amsterdam, Netherlands (The British School of Amsterdam) took part in 2008 and again in 2010.

In 2010 a large amount of schools in Britain did a Sport Relief mile.

Read more about this topic:  Sport Relief

Famous quotes containing the words sport, relief and/or mile:

    “I wish glib and indiscriminate critics of industrialists had some conception of the problems that have to be met by factory management.... General condemnation of employers is a favorite indoor sport of the uninformed intelligentsia who assume the role of lance- bearers for labor.”
    —Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

    “This is the only “wet” community in a wide area, and is the rendezvous of cow hands seeking to break the monotony of chuck wagon food and range life. Friday night is the “big time” for local cowboys, and consequently the calaboose is called the “Friday night jail.””
    —Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    “For half a mile from the shore it was one mass of white breakers, which, with the wind, made such a din that we could hardly hear ourselves speak.... This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed,—more tumultuous, my companion affirmed, than the rapids of Niagara, and, of course, on a far greater scale. It was the ocean in a gale, a clear, cold day, with only one sail in sight, which labored much, as if it were anxiously seeking a harbor.... It was the roaring sea, thalassa exeessa.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)