国内英语资讯:Marathon fever sweeps across China in slapping pace_时事

国内英语资讯:Marathon fever sweeps across China in slapping pace

Besides its sports features, marathon also becomes a promising industry. Amateur runners buy basic sportswear of clothes, shoes, socks and pants, and those experienced ones are more tech-savvy and keen on high-end devices and professional equipment, such as sports watch and heart rate monitor. Their demands provide a huge market with great potential.

"We have our research about foreign road running races, and we believe the fever of marathon in China is sooner or later," said Wu Lixin, senior brand director of Xtep, one of the biggest sportswear enterprises in China.

"We are dedicated to develop products strongly related to running. We are to build up an ecological circle for runners in product research and services, marathon sponsorship, and running social contacts, according to the demand of users," Wu added.

Apart from spending on sportswear and equipment, runners also travel to different places for other marathons, generating expenditure of transportation, catering and accommodation.

TOUGH ISSUES TO TACKLE

However, the marathon fever in China has not yet reached its peak and is still far from enough in terms of quantity and quality, comparing to the United States, Japan and other developed marathon countries and regions.

In 2017, the United States had 1,100 full marathons where 510,000 completed the course. Japan also has a total of 570,000 finishers of full marathon in 2017.