Client: Virgin Money
Location: London, UK

After the cancellation in 2020 due to COVID-19, concerns were high when Virgin Money London Marathon decided to go ahead with the 2021 race. They needed to be sure that the elite runners would arrive at the starting line in peak running form, and free from infection.

Flying in from all over the world, the 200+ elite runners arrived in London to take part in the most competitive and hardest-to-win marathon. Once on UK soil, they converged at the pre-race hotel, the De Vere Beaumont Estate Windsor, where they would remain for 2-3 days with their support teams, media and reporters, and hotel staff, until race day.

With COVID and the threat of infection top of mind, it was key to ensure every athlete was kept safe during their stay. Should the threat of a positive test arise, race staff had to be able to identify who was at risk and isolate them, as well others who had been in close contact.

With our mission being to digitise people safety and asset security ​to maximise business resilience, race administrators reached out to Restrata to implement our platform’s same solution that had successfully enabled international cricket tournaments to go ahead in 2020 and 2021. Restrata Platform and its Pandemic solution allowed:

• The ability for system administrators to account for specific individuals
• Identification of person-to-person violations, tracking location and proximity to others
• Understand when people have been exposed to someone who has tested positive
• Take appropriate action with steps to limit the spread more widely

Using Bluetooth beacons and sensors across 5 zones on site at the hotel, Restrata Platform was deployed off site, providing system admins with the ability to ensure all team members’ movements minimised the threat of infection. Streamlining information in a single cloud platform enabled the whole process to be deployed and delivered in under  10 days. So on race day, every single elite runner was able to take part safely with knowledge that their participation hadn't compromised the spread of COVID-19.