What is the official distance of a marathon race?

The official distance of a marathon is 42.195 kilometres (26 miles 385 yards, or about 26.2 miles).

Origin of the marathon:

The race is named after the town of Marathon in Greece. According to legend, in 490 BCE, after the Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, a messenger named Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory, and then collapsed and died.

The marathon was included in the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, inspired by this story. The race distance then was about 40 km. Spyridon Louis of Greece won the first Olympic marathon.

How the distance became 42.195 km:

At the 1908 London Olympics, the course was laid out from Windsor Castle to the royal box in the Olympic stadium, so that the royal family could watch the start and the finish. This made the distance 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km).

This distance was formally adopted as the standard in 1921 by the IAAF (now World Athletics).

Famous marathon facts:

• The women's marathon was added to the Olympics in 1984 (Los Angeles), won by Joan Benoit of the USA.
• Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya won the Olympic marathon in 2016 and 2020 and ran the first sub-2-hour marathon in 2019 (1:59:40) in an unofficial special event in Vienna.
• The six World Marathon Majors are Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York; Sydney was added as a seventh in 2025.
• The Boston Marathon (since 1897) is the world's oldest annual marathon.

Other race distances:

• Half marathon: 21.0975 km.
• Ultramarathon: any race longer than a marathon.
• In India, the Tata Mumbai Marathon (held since 2004) is the largest marathon in Asia by participation.

Why not the other options?

• ✗40 km was the approximate distance of the 1896 marathon, not the official distance.
• ✗21.0975 km is the distance of a half marathon.
• ✗Good to know
• ✗26.2 is the distance in miles, not kilometres.