In a previous post, I outlined how there was a collapse in the numbers for this year's Grant Thornton 5k in Cork City with a massive drop of 58% on the figure for 2019.
The Galway edition of this race was held last Wednesday and 291 people crossed the finish line which was actually up 2% on the figure for 2019. This is in marked contrast to the 58% drop in Cork.
One curious stat from the Cork edition of the Grant Thornton 5k was that only 17 runners were under 20 minutes which suggests that most of the faster runners stayed away. Someone suggested that this might be due to the fact that the St Lukes Home 5k was just two days later.
Interestingly, the Galway edition of the Grant Thornton 5k only had 12 runners under 20 minutes which was also very small. It does seem to suggest that the faster runners in Cork and Galway stayed away because of the very high €35 entry fee and not because of other races that were on during the week.
The next edition of the Grant Thornton 5k is in Dublin on the 4th of October 2022 and that's a different event altogether. That one had over 4000 finishers in 2019 which puts it on a completely different scale.
A quick calculation gives a gross figure of about €150k in entries. Even allowing for the higher costs in Dublin, it's likely to generate a large profit.
Its a corporate race. If companies pay for it then people will do it. I don't think many just signed up on their own. A lot of companies are very much hybrid at the moment so it likely slipped through the net. My company normally do it, but the discussion didn't come up this year as we weren't in the office and people would have to travel from fruther away, rather than 5 mins down the road
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