The Big Half 2024 will welcome three members of Great Britain’s Olympic team to the streets of London on Sunday 1 September.
Eilish McColgan, who finished 15th in the 10,000m in Paris and won the 2022 edition of The Big Half, will join fellow Olympian and the 2023 champion Calli Hauger-Thackery in the elite women’s race.
In the men’s race, Phil Sesemann, who finished 46th on the gruelling Paris marathon course on Saturday, will return to The Big Half, where he will race alongside the 2023 champion Jack Rowe.
Athletes will be looking to secure places in the Great Britain team for the half marathon at the inaugural European Running Championships, which are being held for the first time in 2025. The Big Half is the official trial race for the event, which is being held in Belgium next April.
The first four British men and women to finish at The Big Half will earn selection provided they have achieved the qualifying time of 62:30 for men and 71:30 for women and meet the required criteria outlined in the British Athletics policy.
Other notable entries in the elite men’s race include Paulos Surafel, who holds the second fastest half marathon time in the UK this year (61:21), Weynay Ghebresilasie, who ran 2:09:50 at last year’s BMW Berlin Marathon, and The Big Half 2021 champion Jake Smith.
The Big Half 2024 elite men start list
- Jack Rowe
- Phil Sesemann
- Weynay Ghebresilasie
- Seyfu Jamaal
- Paulos Surafel
- Logan Smith
- Tewelde Menges
- Jack Millar
- James Hoad
- Alex Milne
- Daniel Mulryan
- Jacob Allen
- Rob Scott
- Dominic Jones
- Patrick Roddy
- Jake Smith
- Marshall Smith
- Mohamud Aadan
The Big Half 2024 elite women start list
- Calli Hauger-Thackery
- Eilish McColgan
- Leila Armoush
- Beth Kidger
- Becky Briggs
- Helen Gaunt
More than 15,000 participants are expected to take part in The Big Half, London’s community half marathon, which also includes The Big Mile, a family-friendly one-mile event, and the New Balance Big Relay in which teams of four complete 5K each of the half marathon route. The event is a celebration of the diversity of London and the communities of the four boroughs the route passes through: Tower Hamlets, Southwark, Lewisham and Greenwich.