About the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team
The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team puts on sporting events in over 20 countries around the world - mainly running, but also other disciplines such as lake swims and triathlons.
We organise races of all distances from 2 miles up, but we are best known for organising long-distance ultra running events, including the Sri Chinmoy 3100 Mile Self-Transcendence Race - the world's longest certified road race.
Many of our races have become very popular fixtures in the countries they are held.
The 24-hour races in New Zealand, Switzerland and Great Britain are their countries' national events, and the Six-and Ten-Day races held in New York every year are very popular races in the US ultrarunning calendar.
In Australia, the SCMT offers an huge range of multi-discipline events, including the famous Triple-Tri - a triathlon performed three times over in the scenic outskirts of Canberra.
The philosophy behind our races
The Marathon Team was started in 1977 by Sri Chinmoy, a spiritual teacher who believed that sports and spirituality went hand in hand. Our races create an atmosphere to practice Sri Chinmoy's philosophy of self-transcendence, where each participant can experience the satisfaction that comes from furthering their own capacities.
Our members
Inspired by this philosophy, many of our members have acheived remarkable feats:
- Ashrita Furman (in video) holds more Guinness world records than anyone else - over 200!
- Suprabha Beckjord from Washington DC finished the 3100 Mile Race a record 13 times.
- Members of the Marathon Team have swum the English Channel over 40 times, including Karteek Clarke with 11 crossings.
The founder of the Marathon Team, Indian-born athlete Sri Chinmoy (right, with Carl Lewis) was himself a prolific marathoner and ultramarathoner in the seventies and eighties, participating in many of our events.
Later, he switched to weightlifting, and set records in this field right up to his passing away in October 2007 at the age of 76. In 2012, a documentary was produced about Sri Chinmoy's weightlifting career called Challenging Impossibility.
Further Reading