Fancy dress charity runners accused of 'choking' running events
Howard Lake | 15 April 2005 | News
Dr Alan Buckingham, a lecturer in sociology at Bath Spa University College, has criticised running event organisers for allowing them to be dominated by fancy dress charity runners at the expense of serious runners.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s the Today programme yesterday, two days before the London Marathon, Dr Buckingham said: “the sheer number of people running the London Marathon for charity are really crowding out the runners who want to run to run.”
Dr Buckingham told The Bath Chronicle: “When I tell people that I’m running a marathon, they ask which charity I’m running for, as if running and charity are synonymous.” He compared the influence of charity participants in running to that in football: “Why don’t we have Michael Owen dressing up as an orange kicking a football around? You wouldn’t accept that, so why do we have to accept that in running?”
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.