Unveiling of Xtra Mile Events Trafford Athlete Fund marks the launch of the 40th edition of the 26-miler

The organisers of the ASICS Greater Manchester Marathon have teamed up with Trafford Council to identify and support the sporting careers of promising young athletes in the borough.

The Xtra Mile Events Trafford Athlete Fund was unveiled at the launch of the 40th edition of the rapidly growing 26-miler, which will next be held on April 10, 2016.

Trafford is the host borough of the marathon, which has enjoyed tremendous success since Xtra Mile Events revived it in 2012.

Individuals can apply for grants at gold (up to 1000), silver (up to 500) and bronze (up to 250) levels to help promising and talented competitors (aged 18 and under) who live within the Trafford boundary to realise their potential and progress in their chosen sport.

Councillor Michael Cornes, Trafford Council s lead member for Sports, Culture and Leisure, said: “Sport is an incredibly important part of Trafford s history and the Trafford Athlete Fund is a great initiative with the right target market.

It enables us to do something a little bit different, not just for athletes but for aspiring youngsters in other sports. Our aim is help them reach their full potential and meet their aspirational future goals and to make them realise they are not on their own.

”This could be by supporting additional coaching, providing better quality equipment or helping towards travel costs. The fund is designed to meet the needs of the athlete as opposed to enforcing rigid criteria on the actual returns.

Our aim is to grow the initiative just like the ASICS Greater Manchester Marathon has grown. I hope we can achieve support from the business community to help swell the fund.

We ve set a deadline of January 18, 2016, for the first batch of grant applications, but there will be other chances to apply moving forward.”

Entries for the fast, flat marathon, which has a British-only prize fund headlined by a record 2000 top award for men and women, are now open.

Race director Simon Hill said: I am hugely excited and it gets better every year. To see the marathon transformed into a major international sporting event is fantastic.

The prize fund for 2016 has been almost tripled and with it being the 40th anniversary, we want to attract the very best British marathon runners. London has got a pull, but British runners don t get the attention they deserve and we decided to reward the top athletes who are coming to race with us.

We are already over-indexing on the proportion of fast times to the number of runners. London has five times as many runners, but they only have three times as many sub-three hours runners. And we want that to come down even more.

This British-only prize fund is hugely supported by British runners and the athletics clubs. We are very happy that ASICS continues as the title sponsor for the race and we are looking forward to unveiling further partners and sponsors shortly.

But the ASICS Greater Manchester Marathon isn t just for top runners. Our flat course makes it ideal for first time marathon runners and in 2015 38 percent of the field ran the distance for the first time.

We are attracting entrants from all over the UK with 70 percent coming from outside Greater Manchester. In addition, the number of international athletes doubled in 2015.”

Fund hopefuls can obtain more information by contacting [email protected] while an application form plus other details of the scheme are available here.

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