All things being equal

A recent BBC study has taken a look at prize money in sport and found that, out of 35 sports that pay money at world level, 25 pay equal prize money to men and women but 10 do not.

Both athletics and marathon running have been found to have no gender gap when it comes to dishing out the dollars for top performances in our sport. The study looked at four of the top marathons: London (first prize £35,000), Dubai (first prize £126,000), New York (£63,000) and Boston (£94,000) as well as the wheelchair races in London (£9,400), New York (£9,400) and Boston (£9,400).

The New York Marathon has been flagged up as one of the pioneers in equal pay as it started paying equal prize money in 1984. The Boston Marathon was close behind in 1986 and athletics caught up in 1993.

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Our own statistics show that the gender gap in participation in road races is getting smaller although we have some way to go before it is 50/50. The marathon shows a more even match but half marathon and 10k are approximately 60/40.

Our ratios of men/women are as follows:

10k 57%/39%

Half Marathon 61%/39%

Marathon 67%/33%