Slovak foreign minister completes Budapest Marathon

13.800 people from 50 countries gathered on the rainy Sunday morning for the Budapest International Marathon and Running Festival where the best known participant was Slovak foreign minister Mikulás Dzurinda.

The 25th SPAR Budapest International Marathon and Running Festival beat the bad weather this past Sunday when over ten thousand people participated in the marathon run and competitions of other distances in the streets of the Hungarian capital. Slovak foreign minister – and former prime minister – Mikulás Dzurinda took the opportunity of adding Budapest to the list of cities of his marathon runs (New York, London, Prague) when arriving to Hungary for first official visit as foreign minister. Running the distance for the 24th time, 55-year-old Dzurinda completed the race in 3 hours and 39 minutes, finishing in position 608 but he was 19th in his age group.

Over 3,000 people started the marathon distance run and the first to cross the finish line was Ethiopian Erkolo Ashenafi who clocked 2 hours, 23 minutes and 13 seconds, followed by two Hungarians, Tamás Tóth (2:24:36) and Zsolt Zsódér (2:24:55). One third of the field consisted of women whose race was won by Simona Staicu (2:37:47), ahead of two other Hungarians, Judit Nagy Földing (2:52:23) and Mariann Póth (2:56:55).