Adelaide’s axed City-Bay Fun Run may go ahead after all but in a modified form

The City-Bay Fun Run might be given a reprieve after it was cancelled for a second year running. But there would be a radical change to the much-loved event.

SA Health is considering the possibility of allowing the City-Bay Fun Run to go ahead after all but in a modified form.

Announcing the lifting of tough restrictions on South East communities on Friday morning, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said SA Health was also looking at a reprieve for the fun run after it was announced on Thursday that it would be cancelled.

“I have had discussions with SA Health this morning. My understanding is they have legitimate concerns about a public event that involves potentially more than 30,000 people,” said Mr Stevens, who is also state Covid coordinator.

“SA Health will be having another look at separating the running component of the City to Bay with the end of event festival.”

Mr Stevens said there was “no guarantee” that there would be a change to the decision but SA Health would consider whether there were options to allow the “running component”.

“Most people generally assume that the City-Bay is a fun run,” he said.

“But there is an expectation on the part of the organisers … that there will be a large scale festival at the completion of the fun run that could involve tens of thousands of people and that’s obviously a different dynamic so this is being considered by SA Health.”

On Thursday, there was a palpable sense of loss and heartbreak inside South Australia’s running community after SA Health’s Covid Management Committee cancelled the event.

Officials cited the high risk for transmission and the significant impact on the state’s health resources in the event of a Covid-19 outbreak.

The Lumary City-Bay Fun Run was due to be held on Sunday, November 7, with thousands of participants already signed up.

Among those to have signed on to the event was SA Olympian Isobel Batt Doyle, who raced in the 5000m at the Tokyo Olympics in July.

She said she was devastated by SA Health’s decision.

“The City-Bay is always a special weekend on the running calendar, but this year, it meant even more to myself and a lot of people because it would have been a celebration of finally having a big race in Adelaide where we could all get together and put our training on show and really enjoy a race together,” the 26-year-old said.

Batt Doyle and her partner Riley Cocks coach about 200 Adelaide runners through their group, RunAsOne and she said they had been flooded with messages.

“There is a real sense of sadness and loss in our running group and in the wider running community here in Adelaide too,” she said.

“A lot of us runners watched the London Marathon on Sunday and they had 40,000 people in the marathon and there had been something like 24,000 new Covid cases in London on Sunday.”

The City to Bay start line in 2018. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

SA Health wrote to City-Bay race director Joe Stevens on Wednesday informing him that the event’s application for a Covid management plan had been declined.

Mr Stevens said the race committee had gone to “exhaustive measures” to satisfy SA Health’s Covid Management Committee, and was extremely disappointed by its decision.

“We have spent a lot of resources this year planning a modified event and responding to Covid Committee requests in the hope that we would tick all the boxes required for protecting community safety,” Mr Stevens said.

He said among those measures, the event had been moved back from its usual third Sunday in September date, to early November as suggested by the Covid Management Committee in the hope that the combination of closed borders, increased rates of vaccination and minimal SA cases would enable larger open-air events to proceed.

Other measures race organisers had implemented included bringing on Detmold Medical and Dominant Chemicals as major sponsors, with plans to hand out protective face masks at the start and finish lines as well as regular hand sanitising stations.

The size of the allocated space at the start and finish lines had also been broadened to allow for greater social distancing.

In a statement, SA Health said: “Running in close proximity to others poses a high risk for spread of COVID-19 due to aerosol generated transmission.”