On course for an extended run

The number of Chinese participating in marathons is rising rapidly, leading to more long-distance races being staged and causing headaches for event organizers. Tang Yue reports.

It's well-known that obtaining a license plate in China is so difficult that several large cities have introduced a lottery system to streamline the process. Less well-known is the fact that the "traffic" on the country's marathon courses is so congested that many organizers have copied their urban-planning peers and introduced their own lotteries for applicants.

This year, the organizers of the Beijing International Marathon, which introduced a lottery for competition berths in 2014, had more than 66,000 applications for 30,000 places in the event. Less than 20 percent of applicants for the lowest-ability group were successful.