Mo Farah leads stellar London Half Marathon elite field

The Big Half – London’s community half marathon – returns on Sunday with an exciting mix of world-class racing, fundraising and community celebrations.

Leading the elite fields will be recently crowned Commonwealth Games 10,000m champion Eilish McColgan, multiple Olympic and World Championships gold medallist  Mo Farah, and Paralympic star David Weir.

McColgan will be up against the reigning The Big Half champion Charlotte Purdue in the elite women’s race, while two former winners, Jake Smith and Chris Thompson, will be among those challenging Farah in the elite men’s race.

Commonwealth Games marathon champion JohnBoy Smith will renew rivalries with Weir in the elite men’s wheelchair race, while Commonwealth Games marathon silver medallist Eden Rainbow-Cooper is the one to watch in the elite women’s wheelchair race.

The wheelchair races will start at 08:25 and the elite men and women plus the masses will get under way at 08:30. 

In addition to the elite races, there will be more than 16,000 The Big Half participants, including more than 3,000 people from community groups across London and a number of famous faces, including Harry Judd from McFly, Casualty actor George Rainsford and comedians Helen Thorn and Rob Deering.

Also included in The Big Half is the New Balance Big Relay, where teams of four can take on four legs of the 13.1-mile distance, and The Big Mile, a family-friendly event over the final mile of the route.

For the first time this year, participants in the half marathon were given the option to choose whether to collect a New Balance finisher’s T-shirt designed by a community group and/or finisher’s medal, or to have a tree planted instead, as part an initiative with Trees not Tees that has seen more than 3,000 trees planted.