3,900 runners at the Berlin New Year’s Day Run – “For the first time ever, we thus succeeded in ending the year with two top performances,” stated Race Director Mark Milde.

The BERLIN-MARATHON started off the running year 2007 at noon at the Brandenburg Gate with 3,900 participants. The runners joined in the festive atmosphere along the 4 k course without timekeeping or a competitive character at the 36th Berlin New Year’s Day Run.
The course led primarily down and back the grand boulevard Unter den Linden to the Brandenburg Gate. The director of the ARD capital television studio, Werner Sonne, sent off the runners with the starting shot and then joined in himself. In lieu of a registration fee, donations were collected for UNICEF.

Record year for SCC-RUNNING

Once again, SCC-RUNNING has concluded the year 2006 with a new record total number of participants. From January 1 to December 31, 2006, a total of exactly 144,599 athletes registered for the 20 different events. That is over 4,000 more participants than in 2005 (140,450). SCC-RUNNING thus fortified its position as the by far largest German running event organiser and one of the largest in the world. All in all, SCC-RUNNING now counts 1,682,425 registrations for 407 events organised since 1967—including the 2007 New Year’s Day Run

“We are pleased that we were once again able to top last year’s numbers. It is our goal for the new year to maintain at the least the level for 2006 and to further develop our races both as events for the masses and for elite athletes,” stated the manager of SCC-RUNNING Rüdiger Otto. Some of the highlights from the past year were two top world performances of the year, provided by Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) at the real,- BERLIN MARATHON (2:05:56) and by Edith Masai (Kenya) at the Vattenfall BERLIN HALF MARATHON (67:16). “For the first time ever, we thus succeeded in ending the year with two top performances,” stated Race Director Mark Milde.

Sponar and Parsiegla won the New Year’s Eve Run

On the last day of the year, Lennart Sponar (Berlin SV 92) and Karsta Parsiegla (SC Charlottenburg Berlin) won the 9.9 km main race at the 31st Berlin New Year’s Eve Run. While Sponar crossed the finish after 32:47 minutes, Parsiegla crossed the finish line in Mommsen Stadium in 42:09. With 1,868 participants, a good 150 more runners participated in the Berlin New Year’s Eve Run than last year. “Despite the mixed weather, the turn-out for this events was quite satisfactory. There were only happy faces to be seen, and many runners entered the race in costumes.
And they keep coming up with new costume ideas,” stated Rüdiger Otto.