The much-hyped Vadodara Marathon turned out to be a chaotic affair on Sunday morning with thousands of participants expressing their displeasure over the mismanagement.

Milkha Singh, Kapil Dev, Irfan Pathan, Yusuf Pathan, Paresh Rawal, Vaishali Thakkar and Manav Gohil were among the star sportspersons and actors present on the occasion.

Chief Minister Narendra Modi said the event was possibly the first marathon put up under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode, which had been endorsed by the state.

He later said he had a desire to convert the city to the ‘speed capital’ of the country with major automobile giants setting their base here.

“We have four jewels of the automobile industry that includes General Motors, Bombardier, Apollo and Jindal. The city will soon become the speed capital,” he said.

But the chaos started the moment Modi flagged off the Marathon at the Navlakhi ground around 7.45 am.

As the first batch of runners took to their sprint, the batches that followed them clogged up at the starting point to get a glance at the star-studded podium. The field was finally cleared with the marathon crew pushing the crowd to get into the race.

But moments later, the entire organising team was found missing from the main venue, apparently eager to see the CM and the other guests.

In the meantime, the first batch of runners including the senior citizens and Under-16 category, who had run a stretch of 5 and 3 kilometres, returned to a desolate finishing point with no crew members to register their timings.

... contd.