Marathon organizers spend $230,940 getting athletes to London amid air travel chaos

Air chaos costs London Marathon $230,940

LONDON — London Marathon organizers have spent $230,940, mostly on private planes, to get competitors to the British capital for Sunday’s race after plumes of volcanic ash led to unprecedented travel chaos.

The bulk of bill was the $168,967 spent chartering a jet to bring in defending champion Sammy Wanjiru and others from Nairobi, Kenya.

“It has been about making sure we maintain the value and quality of the event rather than bean counting,” race director David Bedford said Thursday.

Wanjiru was on a jet that was chartered in Barcelona to Nairobi, and from there to Madrid via Eritrea, Djibouti and Luxor. The runners were finally set to land Thursday at London City airport on a private flight from Madrid costing $55,321.

Most of northern European airspace reopened on Tuesday night, six days after flight paths were closed by ash spewing from a volcano in Iceland.

“The majority of the costs we have taken was about us not wanting to take a chance we would not be able to get people back here,” Bedford said. “While the $230,940 total sounds a lot of money, we will have (other travel) tickets which have not been used which will reduce that cost when we look at it.

“We have a contingency amount in our planning every year, and this (amount) is within that. You cannot put an event on like this without a contingency.”

Organizers spent $2,151 on a propeller plane to fly Mara Yamauchi, last year’s women’s runner-up, from Le Touquet in northern France.

That completed a grueling six-day journey for the Briton, who left Albuquerque, N.M., where she had been training at altitude, last Thursday. She traveled with her husband Shigetoshi to Denver, only to find that flights to Europe had been canceled, and then went to New Jersey to try to get a flight to Shannon airport in Ireland, before eventually jetting into Lisbon.

From Portugal they rented a taxi for a six-hour drive to Madrid, where they discovered there were was no space available on ferries from Spain to Portsmouth. Instead, they rented a car and drove for two days to Paris before taking a taxi to Le Touquet.

“It’s been an interesting journey to say the least and hardly the best way to prepare for the race,” Yamauchi said. “I am tired but most of all just happy to be here. Now at least I have time to relax and begin to focus my mind on the race. I am confident I will be fully recovered and ready to run by Sunday morning.”