Race Organizers Confirm a Cardiff Half Marathon Runner Has Died

Run 4 Wales, which organizes the Cardiff Half Marathon, said on Monday that a participant in Sunday’s race has died, BBC Wales reported. The runner has not been named, no cause of death has been given, and the organizers said nothing further would be released “in respect of the family’s wishes.”

“We’d like to acknowledge the event and hospital medical teams who reacted with great speed and professionalism,” Run 4 Wales said. “Our deepest sympathies go out to the runner’s family and friends.”

Ben McDonald and Dean Fletcher both suffered cardiac arrests at the finish of the October 2018 race, within minutes of each other, and neither survived. McDonald, 25, from the Vale of Glamorgan, was running Cardiff for the first time with his girlfriend and members of his family. Fletcher, 32, from Exeter, was a Cardiff University graduate raising money for the university’s neuroscience, mental health and cancer research, Run 4 Wales said at the time. A year later Nicholas Beckley, 35, a senior planner at Cardiff Council who had finished the race twice before, collapsed at the line and was taken to University Hospital of Wales, where he died, according to the organizers’ statement.

The same hospital treated Stephen Jenkins, 37, after he went into cardiac arrest at the end of the 2024 race. Jenkins, who grew up in Ammanford, did not survive, ITV Wales reported, and Run 4 Wales said he had “received specialist medical care within a minute.” The latest death makes at least five in the seven races held on the streets of Cardiff since 2018. The 2020 and 2021 editions were run virtually because of the pandemic.

The news comes just three weeks after two runners died at the Great North Run, the largest half-marathon in the U.K. Both were 25-year-old men from the North East of England who collapsed at the event on Sept. 13, and the Great Run Company also said it would say nothing more about them, for the sake of their families.

Cardiff is the country’s second-largest half-marathon, and this year’s 23rd edition drew more than 30,000 entrants over the weekend, including more than 5,700 from 99 countries, the most international runners in the event’s history. Joyciline Jepkosgei, the former half-marathon world record holder, won the women’s race in 1:05:40, breaking Edith Chelimo’s 2017 course record of 1:05:52 by 12 seconds, and Gideon Kiprotich took the men’s race in 59:34. The race was the fourth stop of the 2026 SuperHalfs series.