David Weir won the men's elite wheelchair race at the 45th Great North Run on Sunday in 43:06, a tenth victory in the event. Melanie Woods, from Scotland, won the women's wheelchair race in 50:19. Behind them a record 63,000 people completed the 13.1 miles from Newcastle to South Shields, the largest field the race has assembled in its history.
The scale is the story. When the Great North Run was first staged in 1981, 12,000 people ran it. Forty-five editions later the field has grown more than fivefold, and the race has become the figure against which British mass-participation running is measured. Great Run estimated more than 200,000 spectators along the route and around £25 million raised for charitable causes across the weekend.
Weir's tenth win is worth separating from the round number. He first won on Tyneside two decades ago and has kept winning through several generations of racing chair design and a steadily deeper international field. Woods has been among the most consistent British women in the discipline on the roads for several seasons, and her 50:19 was a competitive time rather than an uncontested one.
The elite running races went to Brigid Kosgei, who won the women's half marathon in 1:06:15, and Zouhair Talbi, who took the men's race in 59:47 by 14 seconds from Alex Mutiso. The day's disappointment for the home crowd was Eilish McColgan's early withdrawal with a foot injury, which removed the contest much of the Tyneside support had come to watch and left Kosgei running alone from the front.
What the 45th edition demonstrated is that the Great North Run's health no longer rests on its elite field. A record entry turned out on a mild September morning for a race whose front end was settled early and whose main broadcast narrative disappeared within the first few miles, and 63,000 of them finished. For an event competing for attention against a crowded calendar of city half marathons, that is the more durable number.