Will the 2019 edition of the Grand Toulouse International Marathon, which brought together 13,000 runners, be the last in history? After the cancellation of the event in 2020 due to Covid-19, Philippe Plantade, the vice-president of the
metropolis in charge of Sports, confirmed in the columns of La Dépêche du Midi that the traditional sporting event at the end of October, created in 2007, will no longer take place. Neither this year, nor the next two.

This side step has nothing to do with the pandemic. It is linked to the chronic deficit of the event “of approximately 375,000 euros”, especially for the 2019 edition organized directly by the metropolis after the French Athletics Federation threw in the towel. The elected representative evokes a “set” of reasons for his financial difficulties: the inflation of security systems since 2015 and the return of Vigipirate, the difficulty of finding partners or the failure of the “naming” of the event.

For the next two years, part of the money that will not be used to cover the marathon deficit must be used to finance several other sporting events for a more family audience.