Marathon History in Nepal

It is rare to find the written History of Marathon in Nepal. Nepal`s Marathon runners’ participation in Olympic has been quite regular since Nepal`s first participation in Tokyo in the year 1964.

The oldest Nepali Marathon runners are traced as Min Bahadur Bista and Gaja Raj Joshi. In the First Asian Games held in New Delhi in 1982, Gaja Raj Joshi participated for the very first time in the history of international Marathon competition.

It has been noticed that many Nepali Marathon runners have individually participated in different Marathon events of the World, but there is no statistics available.

Baikuntha Manandhar is one of the most prominent Marathon runners of Nepal, who has participated in 4 Olympic games and, held the South Asian record for quite a long time.

Nepalese Participants in Marathon - at the Olympics

Year	Olympic	Sports	Name
1960	Rome/Italy		Observer
1964	Tokyo/ Japan	Athletics	Bhupendra Silwal
			Ganga Bahadur Thapa
1964	Mexico City/Mexico		No Participation
1972	Munich/W. Germany	Athletics	Jeet Bahadur K.C.
			Bhakta Bahadur Sapkota
1976	Montreal/ Canada	Athletics	Baikuntha Manandhar
1980	Moscow/USSR	Athletics	Baikuntha Manandhar
			Mukunda Hari Shrestha
1984	Los Angelos/USA	Athletics	Baikuntha Manandhar
			Amiri P. Yadav
			Arjun Pandit
1988	Seol/ South Korea	Athletics	Baikuntha Manandhar
			Krishna Bahadur Basnet
			Raj Kumari Pandey
			Menuka Rawat
1992	Barcelona/Spain	Athletics	Hari Bahadur Rokaya
1996	Atlanta/USA	Athletics	Tika Bogati
			Bimala Ranamagar
2000	Sydney/Australia	Athletics
2004	Athens/Greece