Marathon highlights why Turkey can’t host Olympics

“I don’t run in the Istanbul marathon. It really isn't an athlete-friendly event. Just trying to reach the starting point is a hassle, while trying to get to your house after the finish is another hassle,” a friend told me.

I participated in the Vodafone Istanbul marathon for the first time and ran 10 km. Indeed, problems started even before the marathon began, with a lot of complaints about the location of the place where participants were to pick up their chip, (without which you cannot participate in the marathon). It was so far away from the city center (closer to the airport) that those who went early to get their chips and get back to work in the days before the marathon could not even do so because distributions only started at 10:30 a.m! How about sending it via cargo and charging it to the athlete? Are the numbers too high? How about providing this service to those who make early registrations?

Getting to the start, which was located at the entrance of the Bosphorus Bridge on the Anatolian side, was also problematic due to insufficient transport facilities. On the European side, buses to the starting point left from only two locations (Taksim Square and Sultanahmet), which meant that thousands piled up in these two locations. As there were not enough buses, some were late getting to the starting point. Why not have five or six points of departure on each side?

It is one of the main privileges of the marathon to run on a bridge that connects Asia to Europe, so it is normal for the entrance of the bridge to have a limited capacity for the thousands who came to run. Crowds were not the problem. Rather, some people had difficulty just finding the starting points (as the starting points for 10 km and for 15 km were at different...