20,000 smiles, a unique success! Thessaloniki and specifically Greece celebrated its second biggest annual event!

ΝΝ’s 11th International Marathon “ALEXANDER THE GREAT” went down in history as the most superb and brightest event to date. The second biggest event of the year in Greece was a lifetime experience for the 20000+ participants. Everybody was a winner!

The participation record, the new routes, the runners’ excellent support during and after the race, the great performances of the race’s highly skilled champions, the radiance of the Olympic champions’ and people of arts and culture, of every age and physical condition, in combination with the incredible weather conditions, gave the city of Thessaloniki this year’s most beautiful celebration.
More than 20.000 runners, ranging from 9 year old elementary school students to 95 year old Fotis Petridis and 89 year old Savvas Kalpachidis, formed some human waves in Thessaloniki and Western Macedonia and cheered by the applause of many sports fans, sent a message of health and sports through an institution that is dedicated to Stelios Kiriakidis and it has a social, cultural, environmental, tourist, scientific and historic character, as it connects Pella to Thessaloniki, thus justifying its name and reputation.

This year, the final number of the registered runners was impressive too, it reached 20191 (1759 Marathon’s participations, 12599 registered for the 5000m Health & Power Walking Race, 3833 for the 10000m Health & Power Walking Race and 2000 children for the 1000m Elementary School Students Race), consisting of athletes from 51 countries and 5 continents, including many that came to Greece especially for NN’s 11th International Marathon “ALEXANDER THE GREAT”, like the Malaysian 55 year old Sofia Azlan.

In fact, the number of participants was much bigger, since the weather conditions were great and many concerned parties, who weren’t able to register in time, ran along the rest of the runners without the appropriate running gear. There were also many runners that ran the 5000m course after running the 10000m course, so that they enjoy both courses, each as a unique experience, given that it was facilitated by the races’ schedule.