Take it on the run: BBC limbers up for the London Marathon 2023

An EMG-supplied electric motorbike filming Elite women runners on Tower Bridge at the London Marathon 2022

On Sunday 23 April, world-class athletes, including Britain’s Sir Mo Farah and Eilish McColgan, will join thousands of runners and fundraisers to compete in one of the world’s most recognised and colourful races, the London Marathon. More than 50,000 people are expected to make their way around the iconic city course.

Organised by London Marathon Events (LME), the race sees BBC Sport once again in the role of host broadcaster, supported by OB and technical services provider EMG. Live coverage across the BBC runs most of the day, from 08:30 to 15:00, along with highlights and special programming. Some 200 staff will be involved in the production.

“I think the London Marathon is probably the most complicated OB that we do,” says Emma Cook, assistant editor since 2020 of the BBC’s domestic race coverage. “It’s certainly one of the most complicated one-day productions we do. We are the host broadcaster and there are multiple POVs across a 26-and-a-half-mile course, so it is incredibly challenging.”

As the tens of thousands of competitors set off, among them professional male and female long-distance runners, elite-level wheelchair racers, young athletes, fun runners and the general public, a major task must be how to dive into that mass of humanity and tell individual stories.

All in a day’s work

For Cook, working alongside lead director Matt Griffiths in an OB truck at the Marathon finish line on The Mall, it’s an eight-and-a-half-hour day, but it’s plain the athletics fan considers her marathon work session a badge of honour.

“The BBC has partnered with the London Marathon since it started 40 years ago; it is such an important day for us in the year,” says Cook. “I think it’s fair to say we consider it an absolute privilege to be able to tell the stories not just of the elite racers and runners – so many of the greatest athletes in the world who have committed on this course – but also the tens of thousands of people who raise millions of pounds every year for some brilliant charities.”

Around 50,000 people are expected to take part in this year’s race

“It’s an honour to be able to tell their stories to the biggest audience that we can,” she continues. “There are usually some tears shed in the truck because those stories are so powerful, some of them resonate so strongly with the production team and, we hope, our audience at home. I guess we see ourselves as gatekeepers in telling those stories, making sure we tell as wide a breadth as possible.

“I can’t tell you how many meetings we have between London Marathon and our production team, how many hours are spent figuring out the stories and trying to put the jigsaw together of the ones that we want to tell this year.”

Long-distance planning

The scale of the race calls for five separate OBs. “Those at the start and finish are our main units,” explains Cook. “Then we have separate OBs and extra cameras at three key points on the course: Cutty Sark, Tower Bridge and Limehouse – what we call Rainbow Row, which is basically around the mile 14/mile 22 mark.”

“We have a 26.2-mile course, and at one point we have four separate championship races taking place in the marathon course, as well as 50,000 people in the mass-participation races,” she adds. “And we have to tell all the stories with 40 cameras and six motorbikes.”

“I think it’s fair to say we consider it an absolute privilege to be able to tell the stories not just of the elite racers and runners… but also the tens of thousands of people who raise millions of pounds every year for some brilliant charities”

There are six cameras at the race start, including presentation cameras, five at Cutty Sark, five at Limehouse, five at Tower Bridge and nine at the finish, including railcams.

“We also have two helicopters up for the duration of all the elite races that start around 09:00 and finish about 12:30,” adds Cook. “That allows us to get some geography, but also when the packs have split through the race it allows us to be able to show the distance between them.”

Audio is mostly captured on-camera but there are additional fx mics at the start and finish. “The start is mixed at the start OB truck, the race is mixed from the finish OB truck; the presentation at the finish is mixed from the finish truck too,” says Cook.

There’s a major presentation setup for the trackside and final interviews. “We have a purpose-built presentation platform and three cameras at the start as well as a roving reporter with a camera,” Cook explains. “Post-race interviews with all the race winners are done by our finish reporter and additional interviews are done by our presenter in our two-camera presentation area, which is next to the finish gantry. This year we will also be doing some presentation from on top of the finish gantry.”

Telling the story

The editing workload is split between Cook and executive editor Alastair McIntyre.

“Ally is in charge of all the editorial, and he will block down the programme into half-hour/hour-long chunks, making sure that we’re seeing everything on the streets,” says Cook. “In terms of the race itself, I work alongside Matt Griffiths in the finish OB. And it’s challenging – while we want to tell the story of a whole race, we also appreciate for [the coverage] to be approachable we want to tell the story of our domestic sporting heroes like Mo or Eilish.

To plan for the coverage of such elite athletes, the production team works closely with the BBC commentators.

“We have some of the best in the business such as Steve Cram, Paula Radcliffe, and Tanni Grey-Thompson,” says Cook. “We discuss the tactics of the race, who we should be focusing on, where the breaks might come. We know the pace that each of the runners has set and so we can judge when the field is going to break up. But it’s not an exact science.”

“We have two bikes on each of the races,” she continues. “So quite often right at the start, we’ll decide to keep one of the bikes at the front and keep one of the bikes with the pack that might have broken away. We’re making decisions all the time. This time around, Mo Farah might drop off that breakaway pack. At that point, I would say to Matt, ‘We need to get some shots of Mo here, it’s appropriate for us to get them on the bike because we want to see his face. So let’s hold the bike back’. If I do that, though, what if someone in the breakaway group falls and breaks their leg?

“I don’t want to miss shots, so it’s always a bit of a gamble. With the best will in the world, it’s still 26.2 miles. We’re going to miss some stuff.”

The three OBs at Tower Bridge, Cutty Sark, and Limehouse have separate directors, and these have access to multiple cameras in key places to add to the coverage.

“Matt has a running order, a plan of when we’re going to show different places – obviously when we expect the athletes to come through those iconic places on the course,” says Cook. “At those points, I might say: ‘Matt, let’s see the break’. And if we can’t see it on the bikes, then we will use the helicopter. Or, if we happen to be at one of our OB locations, one of our extra directors can direct around that with extra cameras. It’s a bit of a joint process: the editorial story that that we want to tell combined with the different ways that we can technically tell it.”

Run the world

As well as making the domestic feed for our British audience, we produce a world feed,” Cook explains. “We have a small separate operation there that use the same cameras, but the coverage is slightly different.”

“We do focus on British athletes, and sometimes that’s appropriate for the world feed – Mo Farah is a global star for example,” she adds. “Sometimes it doesn’t quite work, particularly if we’re focusing on some of the Brits who are quite a long way back from the top of the field. The director of our world feed can cut away from that. If she feels that we’re becoming slightly too British-centric in our coverage, she has a small mixing desk and can decide whether she needs to move the international feed to a helicopter or maybe one of the lead bikes.”

“We have different commentators working on the world feed as well,” adds Cook. “And for the first time international commentary team is going to be working remotely, from our facilities in Salford.

Joy and pain

“I’m really looking forward this year to the women’s race in particular, it’s an insane field; we expect it to be one of the most competitive women’s races we’ve seen,” she adds. “But equally, we have other stories and narratives to tell, such as the charity run element – we want to see those fabulous scenes of the start at Greenwich and the masses heading off.

“Emotion is really important, a massive theme for us. The London Marathon is joyful, and we want to convey that every year, so we make sure that we show those shots of people running out on the streets. Seeing the joy, and the pain as well – let’s be honest, it bloody hurts running a marathon – and the real achievement, those are the kinds of things that we want to show with our coverage, of the mass race in particular.”

“A couple of years ago, a man ran it dressed as Big Ben, but after 26 and a bit miles, the poor man had to crawl under the finish line because his costume was too big. It did very well on social media. And that’s the thing with the marathon, the moments that we can’t plan for, and other moments that we absolutely live for, just make it so special. I’m hopeful that we might have a few of those.”

The 2023 London Marathon takes place on Sunday, 23 April.