Crowd Strategies - Crowd engineering for safety and visitor experience

Crowd Planning Case Study: The Great North Run

The world’s biggest half marathon The BUPA Great North Run celebrates its 25th anniversary this year (2006).

Since it first began way back in June 1981 642,221 people have crossed the finish line at South Shields.

The event is broadcast live on the BBC from 9.30am and covers the race for four hours.

The course record was broken last year by the first Ethiopian winner of the Great North Run Dejene Berhanu in 59 minutes and 37 seconds, slashing 21 seconds off the previous record set in 2002 by Paul Kosgei.

A total of 8,027,758 miles have been run since the race began, that’s about 308 times around the world.

CROWD

SAFETY

CROWD

ENGINEERING

The Great North Run is the world’s biggest half-marathon, with 50,000 entrants participating each year.

For the runners the hard bit is the race itself, but for Nova International - the specialist sports marketing agency that organises the event – one of the challenges is to safely assemble the entrants before the Run.

The race begins in a section of motorway, which is bounded on either side by steep embankments.

Nigel Gough, Operations Director for Nova International, contacted Simon Ancliffe at Evacuation Strategies for expert help in organising the start area. “We worked with Simon before at the Great Manchester Run, and thought Simon could help us here to improve control and safety at the start area.

The most cost-effective solution for us was to work through a workshop together and develop a framework for me to organise the layout of the start in 2006. I am happy to say that this was a success and will be the basis for out future plans for this Run.”