FRANCISTOWN MARATHON SPORTS EVENT

Events such as marathon are used to bring the community together, promote the destination and also to encourage the fitness (Bowdin, et al 2012) Francistown marathon was an event organized by be-mobile in conjunction with KBL. During this event they were aspects like volunteer roles, athletes’ managers, training needs.

VOLUNTEER ROLES

According to Connors, (1995) states that a volunteer is a person who freely offers to take prat in an enterprise or undertake a task, Volunteers are an excellent source of information about how well the event may be coordinated, managed and delivered. The marshals were involved in many aspects in the event such as directing the runners, catering, first aid or medical assistance. Marshall were categorized into sections improper arrangements of transportation ended up being left(dropped)at sections that they were not supposed to be and also shortage of branded merchandised for volunteers.

TRAINING NEEDS

In the case of marathons volunteers are supposed to be well trained in each and every aspects of their role (Supovitz,2005).Failure to do so will end up affect the runners. At the event some of the volunteers did not know how to hand waters to runners who are in motion which led to runners complaining and also marathons where categorized in groups, it was very important for the volunteer marshal to know where to direct each and every category.

ATHLETS MANAGEMENT

For the marathon event to be effective one has to consider runners management (Theodoraki,2007). Runners have to be managed to avoid cheating and also as it is a call for world athletics board to fight drug use in sport, it is important to consider this aspect. During Francistown marathon there was detector machine that was used to avoid runners to cheat in their race and also recommend drug assessment for the runners.

REFERENCE

Bowdin,G.A.,Allen,J.,0’Toole,W.,Harris,R.,andMcDonnell(2012)EventsManagement.3rd edn.Routledge :USA

Connors, TD (1995) The Volunteer Management Handbook. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Supovitz ,F.(2005).The sports events management and marketing playbook. Hoboken, New Jersey, John Wiley @ sons Inc.

Theodoraki, E. (2007).Olympic Event Organization. Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann.