ORGANIZATION OF THE SUN CITY-TO-SURF FUN RUN, SYDNEY, 1979

Sydney's The Sun City-to-Surf fun run was inspired by San Francisco's Bay-to-Breakers fun run, and has been promoted each year, since 1971, by John Fairfax & Sons Ltd, the publishers of The Sun in Sydney. The objectives of the run are: to improve the level of community fitness by encouraging long-term physical activity; to provide a suitable fun run for the general community as well as for club, and other, groups of runners; to increase goodwill between the sister cities of San Francisco and Sydney; and, above all, to ensure optimum safety and protection for the participants. The Sun City-to-Surf is now one of the largest mass participation events in the world. The number of starters has risen dramatically from 1650 in 1971 to 16.200 in 1979, and this has necessitated a continuing review of organizational aspects, particularly the medical support, because of the increasing potential for greater numbers of runners to become serious casualties. The medical support has been continually upgraded to the extent that, in 1979, both the medical and the first-aid teams together contained more than 200 members. Overall, as detailed below, the coordination and cooperation of approximately 900 members of many organizations was subsequently required to ensure the safety of the runners. The aim of this paper is to describe the organizational structure, medical support, and planning of The Sun City-to-Surf in 1979, as this may help others in planning such mass participation athletic events in other parts of Australia and abroad.