COURTESY OF THE FALMOUTH ROAD RACE: The elite women taking off Sunday morning during the Falmouth Road Race.
FALMOUTH – Falmouth Road Race organizers are appealing a decision by town officials to cap the number of runners for this year’s event at 10,000 entries.
Race President Scott Ghelfi said the decision puts budgetary challenges on the race that normally has almost 13,000 runners.
“Everything we make goes back to the town in the form of grants, donations and scholarships. One-hundred percent of it. So that’s 300,000 that would normally go back to the community. That has been sliced from our budget.”
According to Ghelfi, the local police department was originally looking to cap the race at 8,000 participants, a far cry from the expansion to 15,000 runners the organization was planning to request this year as pandemic-induced limitations abate.
Though a disappointment to race organizers, Ghelfi said that they understand the position local authorities are in and are looking for ways to assist.
“The police force right now is short-handed, I mean there’s no ifs, ands or buts. They have an extremely difficult job and we don’t want them to be any more stressed because of our race,” said Ghelfi.
He said that they are reaching out to outside security entities to hopefully help supplement the local police force.
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