The stand out storyline being the multiple Olympic gold medalist, Sir Mo Farah lining up after breaking the 1 hour world record on track. Competing with Sir Mo, showing fine form this season is that of Marc Scott, the European indoor record holder over 5000m fresh off winning the British 5000m championships in Manchester. Joining these two stellar to name just a few are that of iraitz arrospide garro (2:10:49 marathon), Stephen scullion (2:12:01). The Irish and Spanish athletes are sure to be up there in the race and we are looking forward to seeing what scullion can do after what looked to be a very solid block of training. Many athletes will likely be using the Antrim half as an opportunity to get a race out of their system before the London marathon.
The women’s race is set to see a GB/Irish competition as the field is stacked with talent from the two islands. Current favourites going into the women’s half include Gemma Steele, lily partridge, aly Dixon and Sam Harrison. It will also be interesting to see how the young GB international Becky Briggs performs against the stacked field. This will be Lily Partridge and Gemma Steele’s first race since lockdown also so it will be interesting how the two pair up in the battle at Antrim. Of course the same goes for many as races since COVID have been few and far between. Again many will be using this as a springboard for the London marathon to shake out the lack of racing.
It’s great to see an elite event being held especially at the moment. Many of us have missed racing and watching road races and we appreciate the lengths that race organisers have had to go to ensure the event goes ahead safely. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come and providing numbers stay low the road racing scene can open back up again properly. But for now, it’s going to be amazing to see all of these fantastic athletes battle it out over 13.1 miles.