Eliud Kipchoge had a pretty good Sunday in Melbourne, but a lot of runners behind him would probably describe theirs differently. The two-time Olympic champion won the 2026 Nike Melbourne Marathon in 2:09:10, the fastest time in event history, while the broader two-day festival drew more than 60,000 participants. Camille French, of New Zealand, won the women’s side, in 2:28:25, just 11 months after giving birth to her second daughter.
But farther back on the course, runners were dealing with everything from water shortages and traffic jams to too few bathrooms—and, in a nearby incident, a stolen car that reportedly struck a woman and came frighteningly close to the race itself. A water shortage was already causing problems on the course by the time the festival’s half marathon joined the action at 9:45 a.m., 3½ hours after the marathon set off. Plenty of marathoners were still racing, and some stations were rationing supplies after their water tanks ran dry, News.com.au reported.
One participant later claimed that there was no water available for a 17-kilometer stretch, from 8K through 25K. The water problems also produced a scene you don’t expect to see during a major marathon. The course came with its own set of headaches, too.
At the start, TikTok user @maybemackenzie sized up the wall of runners in front of him as a “40,000 traffic jam” while waiting to actually get moving. Things apparently weren’t much easier at the end, either. Once runners reached the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), complaints shifted to too few toilets and how long it took to actually leave the stadium.
One runner posted a very specific wish list for next year: some water and food at the finish, aid stations every 2.5K on the course, and no “huge bottleneck of people waiting 10 minutes to exit the MCG after running a marathon.” While all of that was unfolding, an even more serious situation developed nearby at Flinders Street Station. News.com.au reported that a stolen car allegedly struck a woman before heading toward an intersection that had been blocked for the marathon. Witnesses said police drew their weapons and that the driver came within meters of getting onto the course before making a U-turn.
Kirk Pearson, owner of Melbourne coffee shop Project Zero Coffee, told The Herald Sun that he saw the car “come screaming through and hit a woman.” He said bystanders moved her out of the roadway as the driver continued moving erratically nearby, while another witness credited a traffic-control truck at Flinders and Swanston streets with preventing the vehicle from reaching marathon runners. Ambulance Victoria said paramedics responded around 10:45 a.m. and transported one patient to Royal Melbourne Hospital. The collision had nothing to do with how the marathon itself was organized, but it added a genuinely frightening incident to an event that had already frustrated runners.
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