For as long as Seán Ó Riain can recall, his October bank holiday weekend has revolved around the Dublin Marathon. Everything from packing goody bags beforehand to gently encouraging runners across the finish line.
Only Ó Riain has never been involved as a runner. Not yet anyway.
“I’ve never run a race, never mind run a marathon,” he says, unabashed. “I have been around the Dublin Marathon all my life, there’s a big family tradition there, and I’ve always been surrounded by runners. But I just never got the running bug, honestly. I don’t know why.”
Whatever Ó Riain may lack in his own running experience he’s made up for elsewhere. In July, he was appointed the first full-time chief executive of the Irish Life Dublin Marathon, his responsibilities also including the three countdown races, plus the new Dublin half-marathon staged in March.
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Running is now strictly his business and his interest, and he couldn’t be more excited about it.
His father Liam is a former Dublin Marathon race director and a member of the original organising committee, and Ó Riain himself has first-hand experience of the highs and lows of the marathon over the past 25 years. Sunday’s 44th running of the event is another 22,500 sell-out, and he’s got some bright ideas on how to make it bigger and better again.
The chief executive role has been needed for a few years now, he says. The Dublin Marathon is a not-for-profit organisation, still organised on a largely voluntary capacity. Ó Riain will now front the executive team with Jim Aughney, race director for the past 29 years, along with technical director Neil Kennedy, and event director Paul Barnes.
“In my youth it was Gaelic football and soccer, but I was never an athlete. It was always travelling to races with my father – he’s still obsessed with running and athletics. He’d have brought me into the Custom House to pack goody bags, then over the years I did various other voluntary roles.
“My job for a few years was clearing people away from the finish line. But I spent more time hugging them, crying with them, so they moved me off that role quick.
“In more recent years, I became deputy operations director, building the infrastructure, the medical tent, instructing all the volunteers. We’ve a saying in the ops crew, as we call ourselves, if you come in for one year, you won’t get out for 25 years.
“After Covid-19, that was the catalyst for change. The 2019 marathon was the biggest to date, and we realised we needed to underpin the business with a governance framework, become fully aligned with the sports governance code.
“That came with some fundamental changes in our business, ensuring we’re resourced adequately, with an executive committee, responsible to a board. I became the chair of that new board, bringing in the skilled individuals that would be able to support our business. But we also had to remember the heritage, like what is the Dublin Marathon? Where it came from, the race for runners, by runners, all of that.
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“So what we’re looking at now is the next five years, to take us into that 50th Dublin Marathon. That means looking at getting more runners to the line, growing our charity partners, and growing our economic impact on the city.”
Ó Riain’s own lack of intimate running experience has echoes of the first running of the Dublin Marathon in 1980, which was the idea of Louis Hogan, then a senior producer with RTÉ Radio. While on holiday in New York, in 1978, Hogan stumbled upon a start-up marathon happening in Central Park. He parked the idea until a year later, when tasked with the promotion of RTÉ’s new pop music station, Radio 2.
“But I hadn’t a clue about athletics,” Hogan recalled. Luckily for Hogan he knew someone who did, two-time Olympian and former Villanova standout Noel Carroll, already familiar to RTÉ Radio listeners as public relations officer for Dublin Corporation.
Their date was set for the October bank holiday Monday, 1980, but because the then governing body of Irish athletics, Bord Lúthchleas na hÉireann (BLE), refused to sanction the event, Hogan and Carroll looked instead to the Business Houses Athletics Association (BHAA).
The BHAA has provided the backbone of the organising committee in the years since, although on occasion the Dublin Marathon did come close to extinction. When Aughney took over as Dublin race director in 1997 there were only 3,123 finishers; within three years he’d helped double that – 7,156 finishing in 2000.
In 2016, the event was moved from its traditional October bank holiday Monday to the Sunday, which Aughney said directly contributed to the first sell-out of runners of 19,500 that year, a 30 per cent increase on 2015.
For Ó Riain, finding the right balance between growing the event and retaining its quality is paramount. For years he’s worked in various banking and financial roles, bringing that expertise and knowledge to the Dublin Marathon as it looked to grow things commercially.
“Up to this year, we were sort of operating race to race. We knew that couldn’t go on forever. We had to ensure the business had a proper framework, and that we didn’t lose what makes the Dublin Marathon so special.
“The Dublin Marathon is a not-for-profit organisation, but we’re always looking to make it better, and a safer experience. But I mean the sheer volume of cost involved in putting something like this on in the city. I can’t easily explain how expensive it is; everything is going north.
“So we had to look at ourselves first, how can we make a bigger impact on the city, but without drawing on more city resources? It’s not about crippling the city more than it already is, it’s about trying to bolster it.
“Just two years ago, the city was talking about moving the marathon out of Dublin city, which would have been very damaging, but happily we’re not in that space any more. We have a great relationship with Dublin City Council, An Garda Síochána, and all our stakeholders.”
According to a UCD Economic Impact Assessment, the 2024 Dublin Marathon generated €23.79 million for the State’s economy. The 2025 event is projected to raise approximately €9 million for more than 120 charities. These are the sort of numbers Ó Riain is confident can grow.
Marathon title sponsors Irish Life have also signed up for another four years, and Dublin are also looking more closely at the major city marathons such as Boston and London.
“We’ve been to Boston the last three years, got incredible access to their executive committee. They’ve gone from 10 full-time staff in 2013, up to 50 now, and they’ve given us a blueprint for what a successful event in the city can look like.
“For the new Dublin half-marathon, earlier this year, we didn’t go for a commercial sponsorship, we partnered with Dublin City Council. We wouldn’t have been able to do that three or four years ago, that gave us the confidence to do more.
“Our countdown race series touches on another 20,000 runners, the half-marathon touched on 12,500 last year, and we’re going to try grow that this year, but still retain that connection with the city, the volunteers. Because we’re only the sum of all our parts, and we need to retain those 2,000 volunteers who come to Dublin every year, and make sure they feel respected, proud of what they do.”
Some changes have already been announced in advance of the 2026 event, the scrapping of the priority entry aimed at increasing both women’s participation and the allowance for first-time runners. For this year’s event, around 70 per cent of entries were decided on priority early entry, which guarantees a spot to all those who entered the race the previous year. From 2026 onwards, almost all general entries will be allocated through a lottery-based ballot system.
Of last year’s 22,500 sell-out entries, just over 18,000 (18,091) made it through the race start line, and there were 17,719 official finishers. Ó Riain believes that number can definitely grow.
“For many years, we did reward those who ran multiple Dublin marathons, but a lot of those weren’t showing up, because they thought ‘we can always run next year’.
“Ultimately this is a fairer way of getting new runners, more women runners, and getting more of them to the start line, which is a key part of our strategy over the next five years.”
For many years, organisers of the Dublin Marathon got the sense the event was just about being tolerated by the city, not embraced by it. Ó Riain believes that attitude has changed for the better, and while Dublin might never attract or accommodate the 50,000-plus runners like London or New York, there is unquestionably room for growth.
“It all comes down to how safely you can get the runners around the city. I absolutely think it can grow. That will mean some changes, but it’s how you do that, because you’ll always have people saying ‘ah, they’re not as friendly as they were before’.
“It will never be 50,000, because the city just couldn’t cope. But could it be 25,000, 30,000? I won’t be the one making that decision, that decision will be made in conjunction with all our stakeholders.
“We also build a hospital behind our finish line, so we don’t draw on the HSE as much. Every service in the city is already at breaking point, and we were just another resource pulling on that. And with An Garda Síochána, when it comes to road closures, we contracted a lot of that out, to take some of the burden off the Garda. Again, we needed the commercial revenue to do that.
“We always want more support, but it’s about relationship building. The demand is there, we know that from the ballot, but it will come in small steps. We need to get more runners to the start line first. And we are making some changes to the finish line to get the runners through faster.
“But, like the St Patrick’s Day holiday, we want to say the Dublin Marathon owns the city on the October bank holiday. And for me, there is nothing more emotional than seeing someone fulfil a personal journey in the marathon, particularly when running for charity.”
