Take It On the Run: BBC Limbers Up For the London Marathon 2023

Take it on the run: BBC limbers up for the London Marathon 2023 By Michael Burns

Friday, April 21, 2023 - 12:30

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An EMG-supplied electric motorbike filming Elite women runners on Tower Bridge at the London Marathon 2022

On Sunday 23 April, world-class athletes, including Britain's Sir Mo Farah and Eilish McColgan, will join thousands of runners and fundraisers to compete in one of the world's most recognised and colourful races, the London Marathon. More than 50,000 people are expected to make their way around the iconic city course.

Organised by London Marathon Events (LME), the race sees BBC Sport once again in the role of host broadcaster, supported by OB and technical services provider EMG. Live coverage across the BBC runs most of the day, from 08:30 to 15:00, along with highlights and special programming. Some 200 staff will be involved in the production.

I think the London Marathon is probably the most complicated OB that we do, says Emma Cook, assistant editor since 2020 of the BBC's domestic race coverage. It's certainly one of the most complicated one-day productions we do. We are the host broadcaster and there are multiple POVs across a 26-and-a-half-mile course, so it is incredibly challenging.

As the tens of thousands of competitors set off, among them professional male and female long-distance runners, elite-level wheelchair racers, young athletes, fun runners and the general public, a major task must be how to dive into that mass of humanity and tell individual stories.

All in a day's work

For Cook, working alongside lead director Matt Griffiths in an OB truck at the Marathon finish line on The Mall, it's an eight-and-a-half-hour day, but it's plain the athletics fan considers her marathon work session a badge of honour.

The BBC has partnered with the London Marathon since it started 40 years ago; it is such an important day for us in the year, says Cook. I think it's fair to say we consider it an absolute privilege to be able to tell the stories not just of the elite racers and runners - so many of the greatest athletes in the world who have committed on this course - but also the tens of thousands of people who raise millions of pounds every year for some brilliant charities.

Around 50,000 people are expected to take part in this year's race

It's an honour to be able to tell their stories to the biggest audience that we can, she continues. There are usually some tears shed in the truck because those stories are so powerful, some of them resonate so strongly with the production team and, we hope, our audience at home. I guess we see ourselves as gatekeepers in telling those stories, making sure we tell as wide a breadth as possible.

I can't tell you how many meetings we have between London Marathon and our production team, how many hours are spent figuring out the stories and trying to put the jigsaw together of the ones that we want to tell this year.

Long-distance planning

The scale of the race calls for five separate OBs. Those at the start and finish are our main units, explains Cook. Then we have separate OBs and extra cameras at three key points on the course: Cutty Sark, Tower Bridge and Limehouse - what we call Rainbow Row, which is basically around the mile 14/mile 22 mark.

We have a 26.2-mile course, and at one point we have four separate championship races taking place in the marathon course, as well as 50,000 people in the mass-participation races, she adds. And we have to tell all the stories with 40 cameras and six motorbikes.

I think it's fair to say we consider it an absolute privilege to be able to tell the stories not just of the elite racers and runners but also the tens of thousands of people who raise millions of pounds every year for some brilliant charities

There are six cameras at the race start, including presentation cameras, five at Cutty Sark, five at Limehouse, five at Tower Bridge and nine at the finish, including railcams.

We also have two helicopters up for the duration of all the elite races that start around 09:00 and finish about 12:30, adds Cook. That allows us to get some geography, but also when the packs have split through the race it allows us to be able to show the distance between them.

Audio is mostly captured on-camera but there are additional fx mics at the start and finish. The start is mixed at the start OB truck, the race is mixed from the finish OB truck; the presentation at the finish is mixed from the finish truck too, says Cook.

There's a major presentation setup for the trackside and final interviews. We have a purpose-built presentation platform and three cameras at the start as well as a roving reporter with a camera, Cook explains. Post-race interviews with all the race winners are done by our finish reporter and additional interviews are done by our presenter in our two-camera presentation area, which is next to the finish gantry. This year we will also be doing some presentation from on top of the finish gantry.

Telling the story

The editing workload is split between Cook and executive editor Alastair McIntyre.

Ally is in charge of all the editorial, and he will block down the programme into half-hour/hour-long chunks, making sure that we're seeing everything on the streets, says Cook. In terms of the race itself, I work alongside Matt Griffiths in the finish OB. And it's challenging - while we want to tell the story of a whole race, we also appreciate for [the coverage] to be approachable we want to tell the story of our domestic sporting heroes like Mo or Eilish.

To plan for the coverage of such elite athletes, the production team works closely with the BBC commentators.

We have some of the best in the business such as Steve Cram, Paula Radcliffe, and Tanni Grey-Thompson, s

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