Canberra Marathon
annual race in Australia held since 1976
The Canberra Times Marathon Festival is an annual marathon held in the city of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. The marathon was established in 1976 and is the oldest city marathon in Australia. The marathon was initially held on November before being moved to April in 1979.
History
The marathon was first held in November 1976 and had 30 people start. It was founded by John Harding, who also was the race director and inaugural winner, with a finish time of 2:36:39. The whole purpose of the event was to allow John Harding to get a qualifying time in order to enter the Australian Marathon. In total 17 people completed the course of which 14 finished in under 3 hours.
In November 1977, the race was known as the "Pre-Pacific Conference Games Marathon" with a total of 85 finishers. The 1978 race had 260 participants and was known as the "Canberra International Marathon" after which it was decided to run the marathon in April to avoid clashing with other races with the 1979 race restricted to 300 runners. The number of runners peaked in 1984 with almost 2,400 starters but dropped in the late 1980s to around 500 runners each year.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Canberra Marathon” as annual race in Australia held since 1976. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as annual race in Australia held since 1976. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 19, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5031268. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1979, 1977 and 1978.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Canberra 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.