IRELAND has emerged as the official winner of the London marathon, according to a mesmerising new animation of the race.
Jess Houghton spent four years analysing the fastest runners by nation since 2014 and then plotted the results on a map of the world-famous route.
Ireland’s runners take gold with Spain in silver and Australia taking bronze. Home-grown runners in their own capital come in at eighth place.
Jess, who works for a mapping software firm based in Aylesbury, Bucks, started by selecting the 15 nations who contributed the most runners between 2014 and last year.
She then selected the top-performing 1% of runners from each country and plotted the average speed for each nation on the map.
Ahead of Britain but not in the top three were Canada, France, Italy and the USA. Trailing Britain were Japan, Netherlands, China, South Africa, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland in last.
Each mile is pinpointed throughout the route and a timer is also positioned on the animation to reveal the average time of each country.
Ireland who take the victory with an average time for its top runners of 2:29:40 – still 27 minutes off the record set on Sunday by Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge.
Spain’s time was 2:32:20 and Australia’s 2:34:20 while the UK finished in the middle of the pack with a time of 2:36:40. Switzerland’s time was 2: 45: 20.
Jess posted the animation last week saying “The data is from the official London Marathon website. I took four years worth of marathon data to make this visualisation.”
The route starts at Greenwich Park with every country neck and neck over the first couple of miles.
However, by the tenth mile Ireland takes a commanding lead, followed by Spain in second and a large group following on behind. At the back trail Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.
By the twentieth mile Ireland has extended their lead as they pull away from the pack, followed closely by Spain. The pack begins to stretch out with the UK firmly at the centre of the group. Switzerland continues to fall back.
Tig999 responded: “The UK will naturally be slowed down by the sheer mass of citizens taking part (many first timers) but will also be sped up by having a large amount of experienced local runners taking part, leaving it somewhere in the middle.
“While Ireland is a close neighbouring country, also with a considerable amount of citizens living in London, this weeds out the regular first timers which will likely dabble in the Dublin marathon first, but allows for many experienced Irish runners to take part due to its proximity.”
Many redditors asked why countries such as Kenya wasn’t included.
Jess replied: “I took the top 15 highest participating countries and Kenya wasn’t in the top 15.”
