“we certainly understand that the more restrictions put in place, the fewer registered runners that we have,” he said. “and we’ve seen that this year. it certainly impacts registration. having said that, we certainly understand that crossing an international border is a privilege, not a right. we work very closely with the border agencies both on the u.s. and canadian sides, the canadian government, to make sure that we have a safe and secure race.”
velthoven said nearly 20,000 runners have registered this year. in 2019, the last race before the pandemic, there were more than 26,000 runners. last year, when the marathon route stayed in the u.s. because of border closures, there were 12,000 participants.
“we’re not where we were pre-pandemic, but we’re certainly moving toward that direction,” said velthoven.
he said most of the race participants are from the windsor-detroit area, so many have likely already used arrivecan.
“although there are more restrictions than there was in the past for our runners, i think our runners are still really excited to race in october,” said velthoven.
“we greatly appreciate all the agencies involved because this takes a lot to get thousands of people over the border and back in a safe and secure way. we’re all looking forward to returning to international come october, and we’ve got thousands of people ready to do it. so we’re pretty excited about it.”