Copyright Hartford Courant
Manchester, Connecticut was named after Manchester, England, and that was the genesis of the idea to “twin” the Manchester Road Race with one of the largest road races in England, the AJ Bell Great Manchester Run 10K. The Manchester Road Race announced that the top Americans from this year’s Manchester Road Race, which will take place Nov. 27, will be invited to run the race in England in May, and the top British runners in the Great Manchester Run will be invited to run the 4.737-mile race in Connecticut on Thanksgiving next year. “I was aware certain towns ‘twinned,’ especially ones with like names,” said Jim Harvey, the elite athlete coordinator for the Manchester Road Race. “I thought if towns could twin, why couldn’t races twin?” Harvey, a former British athlete and coach, came up with the idea and talked about it with Matthew Turnbull, the elite athlete manager for the Great Run Series – of which the Manchester, England race is a part – at the Boston Marathon in the spring. The two races came to an agreement this summer that the first male and female British elite athletes to finish the Great Manchester Run will be invited to compete in Connecticut and the first U.S. male and female elite runners in the Manchester Road Race will be invited to run at the event in the U.K., with the Great Manchester Run and the Manchester Road Race paying the travel and lodging expenses of their respective guest runners. “We are extremely excited about linking our two Manchester races,” said Tris Carta, the president of the Manchester Road Race committee in a release. “In addition to sharing the top runners from our respective nations, we’re hoping this agreement will result in many other positive relationships and interactions between our two great events and cities.” The Great Manchester Run is one of the biggest 10K road races in the world, along with an accompanying half marathon, and attracts 35,000 runners and over 150,000 spectators. “The credit goes to Jim, he came up with the idea, he mentioned it at the Boston Marathon this year,” Turnbull said. “We talked about how we could marry the two with shared names and shared philosophies. “From my point of view, we invite the best athletes in the world to our events. It seemed like an easy add-on from our perspective, to get the top two Americans from Manchester reciprocated by the two top Brits from our race. Hopefully it adds benefit to both races, to both sets of athletes who can make the trip across the Pond. Hopefully it’s a start of a relationship and we’ll see where it can lead to in the future.” The 89th Manchester Road Race, which attracts around 10,000 runners, will be held Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 27, at 10 a.m. on Main Street in Manchester. Already, 6,000 runners have signed up for the race.
