Messe Frankfurt Marathon – Crime Scene investigation

The vocabulary of marathon running can be pretty brutal. Runners talk about ‘sticking the boot’ into their rivals, being ‘on the rack’ when they are suffering themselves, ‘hitting the wall’ when they run out of energy, or even ‘dying’ when they’ve had enough. There are unfortunately and tragically, some who really die in distance races, witness the four fatalities in the recent Great North Run, a half-marathon in the North-East of England. But the Frankfurt Marathon, ever on the lookout for innovation actually gave permission for someone to die on the starting line this morning (Sunday).

Before you complain that this is getting too macabre for words, let me assure you that this is a staged death, for a television programme. Most people in the English-speaking world will have heard of the US series, Crime Scene Investigation or CSI, but the German TV channel ARD has had a much longer running show, over 15 years in fact, with a very similar title – Tatort in German, meaning Crime Scene. And the producers of the popular weekly series chose the start of the mass marathon as the scene of the latest crime. This particular episode is called Das Grosse Rennen, The Great Run.