Opinion | Take shackles off Hong Kong Marathon

This day was expected and as such it came as no surprise to find out that the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon had reached "saturation point" as chief organiser William Ko Wai-lam succinctly put it, relaying the fact that the event couldn't cater to more participants.

Since the bank took over as title sponsor 18 years ago, the marathon has matured from an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini into a regal ballroom gown in terms of numbers. From a few thousand, a record 73,000 runners registered for this February's event thanks to healthy annual increments. But the party is over with the 19th edition next January only being able to cater for the same figure - 73,000.

This is because there is no more room for the runners. Our roads have reached bursting point and the quota cannot be exceeded even though only around 65,000 runners turned up on the day this year. Every year there is a natural wastage of a few thousand who don't turn up despite registering. Organisers could have increased the quota for next year to 75,000 or more, but they couldn't take that risk of overloading the event. So the prudent move was to limit numbers to this year's quota, even though the marathon maximum has been increased by 1,000 to 15,000.

It's a shame Hong Kong's largest participatory sporting event can't cater for more. For years the organisers have been urging the government to provide a better route and more time (so that runners could complete their races rather than being bussed off). But these pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

Next January's race will be the first one for May Tan as chief executive officer of Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong). This week she also urged "everyone to support the event". Her words were obviously targeted at the government who by now must be quite used to the head honcho of the bank calling for more support.

A previous big shot from the bank, Peter Sullivan, once described this event as "lacking soul" when he echoed the views of overseas runners, many of whom said running on the highways, bridges and in the tunnels of Hong Kong was a lone and heartbreaking experience. His successor Benjamin Hung was more forgiving and recently labelled the race as one that had a lot of heart - mainly because of its charitable nature. We wonder how Tan will express herself once she has had her fill of it on January 25. So far she has enthusiastically followed Sullivan's and Hung's line in selling the event. She said that there was "already a buzz of excitement and anticipation in the community". We agree with that. Then she added: "There are 73,000 passionate participants and I'm thrilled to see the growing enthusiasm". Hmmm, growing?