The Cork BHAA hold some of the most popular road races in Cork and they recently had their last summer evening road race for 2025. I had a look at the numbers to see if there are any trends.
The following 10 races were held in both 2024 and 2025... John Buckley Sports 5k, PwC 5k, Gas Networks Ireland 5k, Musgrave 5k, Stryker 4m, Sterling 5k, Apple Employees 5k, Pfizers 6m, DePuy Synthes 4m, ThermoFisher 4m.
If we were to examine one race on its own then it might be skewed by say a wet evening one year and a dry evening the following year. By looking at a pool of races, factors like the weather tend to cancel out and we can see what the real trend might be like.
As the graphic above shows, the numbers were up for five of the Cork BHAA evening races in 2025 and were down for five compared to 2024.
The average number of finishers for the ten races above was 560 which is impressive in itself and that was up just 1.5% on 2024.
Post Pandemic... If we look at back at the summer races for the 2022 to 2025, there are 7 races which were held every year. For example, the Apple race didn't start until 2024.
After the pandemic, there was a big drop in race numbers and there was strong growth afterwards.
You can see from the chart above, the average number for the selected 7 races moves upwards and then beginning to flatten out in 2025.
The growth went from 22% in 2024 to 4% in 2025.
And the future?... If we use the chart as a guide then it certainly suggests that the Cork BHAA numbers will level off in 2026 and there will be no growth .
The club races in Cork have followed in a similar fashion and I've noticed this year that some of the road races in north Cork have shown no growth or have even dropped.
As I've outlined in a previous post, there does seem to be general increase in the entry fees for club races and it remains to be seen if this is going to become a factor in the race numbers going forward.
At the end of the year, I'll have a look at the BHAA numbers for the year as a whole.
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