Prague International Marathon spol. s.r.o. (“PIM“) was set up in 1995 by Carlo Capalbo, President of the Organizing Committee with the aim of organizing a large-scale international marathon on the streets of Prague. A total of 958 runners made it to the start line of that first race. Since then, PIM’s activities have burgeoned into a whole series of running events referred to as the RunCzech races.
The Volkswagen Prague Marathon ranks among the top 10 world marathons taking place in one of the most beautiful locations. Since 1999 PIM has also been organizing the Prague Half Marathon along with the Prague Grand Prix races of shorter courses. In 2012 the Sportisimo Prague Half Marathon became the year’s fastest half-marathon in the world! The Ethiopian runner, Atsedu Tsegay completed it in the event record time of 58:47.
In 2017, Kenya’s Joyciline Jepkosgei, a member of the RunCzech Racing team, broke the world half marathon record as well as the 10km, 15km and 20km marks at the Sportisimo Prague Half Marathon on the way to winning the race in 1:04:52. Jepkosgei continued her stellar performance in September at the Birell Prague Grand Prix where she bettered her 10 km world road record to 29:43. The total of 9 event records and 4 Czech records were broken at the RunCzech 2017 series.
Races organized by PIM are sponsored by some of the largest companies in the Czech Republic. Volkswagen, adidas, Sportisimo and Mattoni are a few of them. The whole organization and atmosphere of the races has drawn to the Czech Republic a number of renowned names in the athletic world (E.g. Haile Gebrselassie, Stefano Baldini, Paul Tergat, Moses Tanui, Antonio Pinto and Patrick Makau), as well as thousands of visitors.
In 2013 a unique center of running – the Running Mall – was opened in Prague, which became an example to be followed by other world race organizers.
In the summer of 2013, PIM also became the co-organizer of the running foundation in Kenya.
Tempo Team is dedicated to developing marathon races along with other running events held in Europe. It was established in the year 2000 by a group of experts and sporting enthusiasts. The term “tempo” is derived from the name of the organization “The European Marathon Promotion Organization”.
Tempo Team’s activities entail concept creation, brand building, and marketing as well as the actual organization of sporting events. Right from the start, tempo team has played a key role in organizing the Prague Marathon as well as developing the RunCzech series.
Tempo Team stands for the main organizer of races held in various regions of the Czech Republic under the name of RunCzech races comprising the Mattoni České Budějovice Half Marathon, the Mattoni Olomouc Half Marathon, the Mattoni Ústí nad Labem Half Marathon and the the Mattoni Karlovy Vary Half Marathon.
In 2016 the team starts to work on two races in Italy – Napoli City Half Marathon and Sorrento Positano, creating a new project called Napoli Running.
In 2018 a new race Liberec Nature Run was added to the collection of RunCzech races.