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Mark Milde, the man for the elite runners and inline skating

Mark Milde has known what the BERLIN MARATHON was since he was a kid

2003-09-25

Mark Milde had big shoes to fill when he became in charge of committing top athletes a few years ago. He has been responsible for getting the elite racers since 1998 and is in part responsible for numerous world records at the BERLIN MARATHON, as well as for the European record at the Bewag BERLIN HALF MARATHON.

Mark Milde has known what the BERLIN MARATHON was since he was a kid, even though the race then still took place in the Grunewald Forest. No wonder, for his father, Horst, has been the race director since the beginning of the race in 1974. In the early 1980s, Mark and his older brother Karsten helped out with the race number distribution. Later, when his younger sister Gesine joined in the inner-family organisational team, they all helped out at one of the refreshment points along the course, among other duties. Over the years, Mark Milde became more and more incorporated into the organisational structure of the BERLIN MARATHON and SCC RUNNING.

Parallel to his helping out, he also made his own respectable athletic achievements. As a high school student, Mark Milde ran the 1000m in 2:35 minutes, and as a 21-year-old, he surmounted the Ironman Triathlon in Roth (3.8 km swimming, 180 km biking, and marathon) in 11:22h. He ran his fastest marathon in 2:50:36h in Copenhagen. Due to his organisational responsibilities, he has not yet run the marathon in Berlin, but he has run the classic marathon races in Boston and New York.

Mark Milde brought his own athletic experiences into the marathon organisation team. It was Mark who in 1995 optimised the distribution of drinks for the top athletes. From then on, the elite runners in Berlin could be sure not to ruin their race with a missed bottle and lacking fluids. Every top athlete had his own assistant who could supply him drinks by bike if he missed one of the refreshment points.

One of Mark Mildes ideas had a completely different dimension. He initiated the inline skating race which has been integrated into the real,- BERLIN MARATHON since 1997. “When skating became more and more popular, the thought came: That could go well with a street race,“ Mark Milde remembers. The Berlin Skating MARATHON is now the largest in the world. This year for the first time, the race with almost 10,000 skaters will be a day earlier, on Saturday. “We want to give the skaters their own stage. The sport deserves to be highlighted,“ says Mark Milde.

Mark Milde also played a decisive role in the greatest athletic and financial coup in the history of the real,- BERLIN MARATHON. Two years ago, he committed Japans Olympic champion, Naoko Takahashi. For twenty years, the best women runners in the world tried without success to run a marathon under 2:20h. Naoko Takahashi did it in Berlin. She ran in 2:19:46h, came back one year later and won again in a first-class time. Milde Junior secured the finances needed for what seemed to be out-of-reach starting monies with an additional television contract. The real,- BERLIN MARATHON was shown live in Japan, which then again meant enormous publicity and additional sponsors. Japanese writing appeared next to the German main sponsor, real,- on the race numbers. By committing Naoko Takahashi, the real,- BERLIN MARATHON took in a total of about two million dollars extra over the past two years. On Sunday he has one more trump in the field: the Kenyan Paul Tergat, who has the potential to set a new world record.