Virgin London Marathon Website Goes into Meltdown
Virgin London Marathon website goes into meltdown as thousands of runners try to register for the 2010 Virgin London Marathon
The 2009 Flora London Marathon was run in dry sunny conditions on Sunday and record crowds cheered the runners on as they completed the 26.2 mile course that weaves its way round many of London’s famous landmarks.
With Richard Branson’s Virgin money group taking over sponsorship of the event from 2010 the £17 million pound 5 year sponsorship deal probably looked like a bargain with such positive feeling surrounding the event, but the reality of trying to register for the 2010 race the next day was much less positive experience.
With entries for the ballot for the 2010 race opening at 9am on Monday morning the website was totally swamped and for most people wouldn’t load at all with a generic error code being returned saying the website was unresponsive..
Later in the day a message appeared from the Race Director David Bedford stating that "Due to unprecedented demand for marathon places, this website is currently unavailable. Please try again later today or tomorrow".
This message probably placated some of the runners who were using the online entry system for the first time this year but for those runners who also entered via this system last year and had exactly the same experience with the website being unavailable all day it doesn’t really wash.
Clearly the present system doesn’t work properly so needs to be changed in some way as this was the second year that entries were taken online and the second year it went into complete meltdown on the first day, that isn’t an unprecedented event it’s a trend David Bedford!
The entry into the ballot for places in the London Marathon is always a stressful affair for many as over 100,000 applicants compete for approx 10,000 places to run the event many of which are running for good causes close to their hearts, disappointment for the majority is inevitable.
Charity places get ever more expensive and hard to come by and with the current economic climate the ballot is the only route many people will have into the race so making a simple, easy, transparent and stress free affair should be a priority for the organizers.
Hopefully now that the Virgin group have taken over the sponsorship of the event negative press will want to be avoided and changes to the online system will be implemented so that this particular runner doesn’t have to stay up until 1.45 am to get his entry in to the event.
With Richard Branson’s Virgin money group taking over sponsorship of the event from 2010 the £17 million pound 5 year sponsorship deal probably looked like a bargain with such positive feeling surrounding the event, but the reality of trying to register for the 2010 race the next day was much less positive experience.
With entries for the ballot for the 2010 race opening at 9am on Monday morning the website was totally swamped and for most people wouldn’t load at all with a generic error code being returned saying the website was unresponsive..
Later in the day a message appeared from the Race Director David Bedford stating that "Due to unprecedented demand for marathon places, this website is currently unavailable. Please try again later today or tomorrow".
This message probably placated some of the runners who were using the online entry system for the first time this year but for those runners who also entered via this system last year and had exactly the same experience with the website being unavailable all day it doesn’t really wash.
Clearly the present system doesn’t work properly so needs to be changed in some way as this was the second year that entries were taken online and the second year it went into complete meltdown on the first day, that isn’t an unprecedented event it’s a trend David Bedford!
The entry into the ballot for places in the London Marathon is always a stressful affair for many as over 100,000 applicants compete for approx 10,000 places to run the event many of which are running for good causes close to their hearts, disappointment for the majority is inevitable.
Charity places get ever more expensive and hard to come by and with the current economic climate the ballot is the only route many people will have into the race so making a simple, easy, transparent and stress free affair should be a priority for the organizers.
Hopefully now that the Virgin group have taken over the sponsorship of the event negative press will want to be avoided and changes to the online system will be implemented so that this particular runner doesn’t have to stay up until 1.45 am to get his entry in to the event.
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