Detroit Free Press Marathon
Annual marathon
The Detroit Free Press Marathon is a 42.195-kilometre (26.219 mi) race run every third Sunday in October in Detroit, Michigan, United States, and Windsor, Ontario, Canada, since 1978. The marathon course is international and has featured the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel for all but two years of its existence. The current course crosses the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel between Detroit and Windsor. Due to its use of the tunnel, the race is able to boast that it has the only official underwater international mile in the world, as the tunnel runs underneath the Detroit River. The race is a USATF-certified, Boston-qualifier course.
The race weekend also features an international half-marathon, a U.S.-Only half-marathon, a relay, a 5K, a 1-mile, a Kids Marathon and a Kids fun run.
History
The predecessor to this race was the Motor City Marathon which started in 1963 and featured multiple laps on Belle Isle. Until 1968, the race was held on Thanksgiving Day.
The first international marathon was organized by former Detroit Free Press editor and publisher Neal Shine, who was inspired to produce a race in Detroit after witnessing the Falmouth Road Race in Boston during a family vacation.
From 1978 to 1998 the race started in Windsor and finished in Detroit.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5265930. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1963, 1968 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Detroit Free Press Marathon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.