Regarding collaboration with the Bank of America Chicago Marathon

The Osaka marathon has collaborated with the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, one of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, ever since its first race. We have collectively striven to further develop both races by mutually dispatching local representative runners to our reciprocal events.

Major cooperation examples:

• ・Dispatching representative runners from the Osaka Marathon living in Osaka – one male and female runner each - to the Bank of America Chicago Marathon scheduled for the following year.
• ・Accepting representative runners from the Bank of America Chicago Marathon living in Illinois – one male and female runner each - to the Osaka Marathon scheduled for the following year.
• ・Placing an ad in each other’s program.

Reference: General Information on the Bank of America Chicago Marathon

Date	Sunday, October 8, 2017 starting at 7:30 a.m. * Scheduled for the second Sunday in October every year
Venue	Starts and finish in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois over a course of 42.195 km
Number of participants	Approx. 45,000 including wheelchair participants
Time limit	6 hours and 30 minutes
Features	The Bank of America Chicago Marathon has a long history since the first race held in 1977 and will commemorate the 40th holding of the event in 2017 as one of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, together with other AWMM races hosted in Boston, London, Berlin, New York and Tokyo. The course is known as being flat and fast, where records can easily be broken and has spawned two world records for both men and women previously. Indeed, the Japanese athlete Toshihiko Seko won in 1986, while the Japanese course record of 02:06:16 by Toshinari Takaoka in 2002 remains intact. Runners from 120 nations worldwide participate in the race and around 1.7 million spectators come to the sidelines to support runners traversing the downtown area, as well as cheerleading squads from different ethnic backgrounds and a range of live performances by cheering bands. http://www.chicagomarathon.com/