The 2020 edition of the Kuala Lumpur Standard Chartered Marathon (KLSCM), taking place on 13 and 14 June 2020, sold out public registrations for all available categories within seven hours – a new record.

Specific New Criteria

This is despite KLSCM’s owner and organiser, Dirigo Events, introducing specific new criteria for priority registrations to enable more race entries to be available for the public registrants.

KLSCM has grown to become the premiere running event in Malaysia, drawing thousands of local and international runners to the country whilst firmly establishing Malaysia in the global running calendar.

Such criteria has included either having taken part in KLSCM at least five times or having recorded competitive finish times in their preferred category within the last two years, for example, a sub-4 hour timing for males for the Full Marathon or a sub-2 hour timing for the Half Marathon or sub 1-hour 10km timing. And for women, the criteria was running sub-5 hours for Full Marathon, sub-2:15 hours Half Marathon or sub-1:15 hours for 10km.

KLSCM has been massively oversubscribed 

In recent years, KLSCM has been largely oversubscribed and to increase capacity, a two-day format was introduced a couple of years back, with the Kids Dash and 5km categories on the first day and the 10km, Full and Half Marathon on the second day, thus allowing the event to hit a record 40,000 registrants last year. This year, the 10km category is also being shifted to the first day.

Photo: KLSCM

Says Rainer Biemans, Project Director of KLSCM and Director of Dirigo Events, the organisers of the race, “We are extremely grateful for the strong following of our event so much that despite increasing our total capacity, together with that for the public registrations, we still managed to sell out the whole event in seven hours. Our focus now is to work hard to deliver the best possible race experience to all those who have successfully registered their participation.”

KLSCM Race Weekend Capacity Increases to 45,000 Runners

With the 10km race on the first day this year, KLSCM’s capacity over the Race Weekend is increased to 45,000 runners.

Added Biemans, “We reached our 35,000 capacity as a one-day event in 2016, and are extremely thankful to DBKL for allowing us to expand into a two-day format a couple of years back. With the 10km race now being held on Saturday 13 June, we are now able to increase our capacity further.”

Increase brings its own set of challenges and tweaks

However, the increased capacity brings its own set of challenges to play and the organisers have had to tweak certain elements of the event to ensure that all runners have the best possible race experience.

Due to the 10km category being held on 13 June, the Friendship Run has had to be cancelled because of logistical complications.

As well, the 3km Kids dash will be shortened to 2km to accommodate the larger number of runners on Saturday. Children who are aged 12, however, can opt to take part in the 5km category if the 2km route is not challenging enough.

Photo: KLSCM

Still pathways to participating in KLSCM 2020

For runners who are still keen to take part in KLSCM, there are other pathways to participating, primarily involving the charity initiates of KLSCM under the Run For A Reason (RFAR) and Corporate Challenge programmes. Runners who register under these categories need to purchase a slot from one of KLSCM’s charity beneficiaries, upon which they can begin raising funds for their chosen charity.

As well, two new charity beneficiaries are being introduced to the RFAR line-up this year – FutureMakers by Standard Chartered and Teach For Malaysia.

Said Biemans, “We are delighted to introduce FutureMakers and Teach For Malaysia into our fold as they have been doing amazing things for the betterment of society. Together with our existing beneficiaries, we hope to be able to exceed our record haul of RM 890,000 last year and breach the RM 1 Million mark this time around. That amount of money can certainly make a difference in so many lives.”

For more information on KLSCM, head to https://www.kl-marathon.com.