By Ban Zhuo

Special to Tsinghua News Center

                                                 (Photo by Jing Ting)

A record 6,501 Tsinghua students ran in the Beijing International Marathon on Oct. 16, the highest turnout in the six years the university has participated in the annual event.

The marathon, a hugely popular sports ritual in the Chinese capital, started in 1981 and has been expanding in terms of scale and participation ever since. A total of 20,834 professional and amateur athletes took part in this year’s race.

Tsinghua students accounted for more than one-third of the total number of entrants, according to Zhang Wei, a coach from Tsinghua University Sports Department.

Zhang has been leading the Tsinghua Marathon Team since 2000, when the university took part in the event for the first time. Since then, the race has become an important day on the of Tsinghua calendar. 

“Tsinghua booked more than 100 buses today to transport all 6,501 students to Tiananmen Square,” Zhang said. “This is the biggest student event for Tsinghua outside campus.”

Although the total length of a marathon is constant, the course itself has been modified many times. This year, the 42 km course started from Tiananmen Square, and ended at the Olympic Stadium. The course was divided into sections so that participants could run in full-length, half-length, 10 km or 4.2 km groups.

“In 2000, only around 1,200 students and staff from Tsinghua participated in Beijing Marathon, with no one running the full length,” Zhang said, adding that this year, “784 applied for the full-length race.”

Du Chao, also a coach in the Sports Department, said that 39 of the Tsinghua full-length runners were women.

A majority of the students chose to take the less physically challenging 21km race. The 3,000 Tsinghua students in this category accounted for more than 50 percent of all half-length runners. 

All students who applied for the full-length or half-length marathon had to pass a strict physical exam to be eligible, according to Tsinghua senior Ma Longxiang, a four-time Beijing Marathon runner.

Ma finished in second place among Tsinghua students this year. Before crossing the finish line, he saw the official count on the time-clock: 3 hours and 6 minutes.

Ma attributed this result to the training he received as a member of the Marathon Club of Tsinghua. Students who are not Marathon Club members were offered a one-month training course in September to get physically prepared for the race.

“Any healthy students in Tsinghua can run a full-length marathon, if they have proper training,” coach Zhang explained.

Zhang said one of his ambitions is to make participation in the Beijing Marathon a part of Tsinghua culture.