Keeping the Dublin Marathon clean as Colin Farrell commits to the historic event for charity

The Irish Life Dublin Marathon takes place on Sunday, October 27. It will have a new start and finish line as part of a compromise made to keep it in the city centre - and it has Penguin star Colin Farrell among the 22,500 entrants

Ruth Chepngetich's remarkable Chicago Marathon run that smashed the women's world record has stunned the athletics community.

The Kenyan raced home in two hours, nine minutes and 57 seconds, beating the previous best by Ethiopian Tigst Assefa by nearly two minutes.

Kenyan distance running has been rocked by a number of doping scandals in recent years and Chepngetich was asked after her victory if those issues make it understandable the people would question her new record.

READ MORE: Dublin Marathon photos as new record set by winner

READ MORE: Inside the life of Penguin star Colin Farrell from famous exes to near boyband fame

"People must talk, but I don't know," she said, having beaten her own previous best by four minutes and 22 seconds.

Dublin Marathon race director Jim Aughney insists that everything has been done to try to make the event in the capital a clean one. The winner of the 2015 and '17 women's race and the 2022 men's race Taoufik Allam of Morocco in Dublin have now both been provisionally suspended for testing positive to EPO.

Aughney said that Dublin Marathon organisers wrote to World Athletics to see if there were grounds to recoup any of the €12,000 prize money won by Allam but were told that he had been tested by World Athletics at the time and was passed to compete.

The Dublin Marathon became a World Athletics elite status event last year and that ensured that every elite athlete entered must then be registered with World Athletics - and that only World Athletics approved agents can source athletes for the elite race.

"So as soon as we start inviting them, even though the list may change, we have to send them to World Athletics and if there's anything there they say, 'well listen, you can't do this'," explained Aughney.

"And, because it's an elite event, you actually have to expand the testing afterwards. That happened in 2023 and we're doing that again in 2024."

Meanwhile, the Dublin Marathon is celebrating the decision to keep the iconic 40-year-old event in the city centre with new start and finish lines - and with Colin Farrell take part for a charity cause dear to his heart.

There were fears that the Irish sporting institution would be taken out of the heart of the capital as Dublin City Council and the National Transport Authority wanted to move it elsewhere due to public transport disruption.

A compromise was reached with a new start line on Leeson Street Lower - it was on Merrion Square Lower previously - and a new finish line on Mount Street Upper devised for the event on Sunday week.

The plan is for this route to remain in place for years to come now that concerns over the marathon's future have been allayed, and with a full capacity 22,500 registered to run.

"Yeah that’s the plan, we’ll have this footprint for a while, that’s where we want to be," said Aughney. "That’s what the city wants to support. It’s a new start and finish, so effectively it’s like starting all over again, but we're delighted to be back in the city.

"Normally it takes two to three years to bed into a new start-finish to get everything the way we want it to be. That will be a concern on the morning, but hopefully we can plug any gaps before somebody else sees them."

Aughney added: "You have to understand the city is changing, it’s a much different city now than 10 years ago, so you can understand the concerns of some people. Obviously we’d have liked to have stayed there, but we’ve achieved so much under the negotiations.

"As always we’ll sit down with them afterwards. We need to look at the data after in terms of what impact that has. The street where we’re starting is a lot narrower - last year it was 12.5m wide, so you’re sending them off at about 1,600 a minute. We have an 8.5m startline this year, which reduces the number we can bring through to maybe 1,300 (per minute).

"That has its advantages out on the route, less people passing the water stations at the same time, the normal pinch point going into the Phoenix Park, we expect that to disappear this year.

"Then come around to the finish, last year we were handing out medals at 148 per minute, that will drop, but over an extended period of time. So we will look at all those numbers afterwards, and say ‘listen, this is the maximum’ or we can apply for an extension on Fitzwilliam Square, get a few more up there. But it will be new to us - we’ll have to sit down afterwards and look at the numbers."

The big crowds watching the race unfold will be keeping an eye out for Hollywood star Farrell, who will be running in honour of his close friend Emma Fogarty, the longest-surviving person with the severe skin condition epidermolysis bullosa (EB).

The Oscar nominee aims to raise €400,000 for Debra Ireland. Farrell, who is due in Dublin in the middle of next week to be given a course tour, has been talking about his marathon mission on US chat shows.

"You’re been sent all of these video clips from the channels in the States and of course the people are like, 'ah Jesus, that’s cold at that time of the year, could they not organise it at some other time'!

"Yeah, Colin will be in, he’ll see what the route is like. He’s picking up Emma then on Nutley Lane and pushing her then all the way in because she’s 40 this year.

"She wanted to do something with a four in it, so she'll be 4km out (from the finish) and then he'll push her the rest of the way. It will be a big profile for the event, so we're looking forward to that."

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