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Easter Festival 2022 news – and an appeal for your support!
Hi everyone, long time no see! The first news is that plans have commenced for the Isle of Man Easter Festival of Running 2022 to go ahead in full force after the cancellations of the past two events due to the Covid situation.
We are retaining the event in its traditional format and on the usual courses. That means the 10k road race will be held in Port Erin on the evening of Good Friday 15th April, the Peel Hill races will be on Easter Saturday afternoon 16th April, and the 5k road races on Douglas Promenade on the morning of Easter Sunday 17th April. We also plan to hold the traditional prize presentation at the Outback Sports Bar on the Sunday evening.
As far as visiting the Isle of Man is concerned, most of the Covid-related travel restrictions that have been enforced since March 2020 have now been eased, and continue to be relaxed further as time goes on. The political will on the Island certainly seems to be to return to normality as soon as possible and to re-establish the tourism industry. We hope that by next April most if not all the restrictions will have disappeared altogether. The world-famous TT races, which attract tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world, are set to go ahead next year.
Perhaps what sets the Easter Festival apart from other running events on the Isle of Man is the number of visiting athletes who take part every year. University groups in particular make up a large proportion of the entry, and the annual trip to the island for the running and various social activities that run alongside the races have become an annual ritual. Leeds and Manchester Universities have been supporting the Festival since the 1970s, and we have been delighted over the past 10 to 15 years to see more and more university teams taking part.
The big problem we have after missing two years is the loss of continuity in the organisation of trips by the visiting teams. By 2022 there will be few current university students who will have been to the Festival, let alone organised a trip to it. We thought it may be helpful at this point to re-publish an article put together a few years ago with the help of Manchester University’s George Bilsby, which gives quite a comprehensive guide to organising a group trip to the Isle of Man for the Festival. This will hopefully prove useful.
We would also appeal to the student population out there for contact details for university athletic clubs, to help us to publicise the event right from the start of the academic year. In particular we would appeal to our traditional university visitors to get in touch with us – Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Durham, Sheffield, St Andrew’s, Dublin, Keele, Lancaster, Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford Brookes.
We currently have 1,712 members of the group – if many of you, especially those who have travelled to the Festival in the past, can share this post it will be a huge help in getting the word round the student population that the Festival will be back in 2022 and that we want to see you on the Isle of Man next Easter!
We have tonight posted refund cheques to everyone whose entry has not been transferred to 2022. Hopefully these should be with you before the end of the week if not a day or two earlier.
If you are expecting a cheque and do not receive anything in the next few days please e-mail easterfestival@manx.net.
Thank you to everyone who contacted us to ask for their entry to be rolled over to 2022. If you did this you should have received a confirmatory e-mail by now.
For everyone else, we will now start work on refunding all monies paid. Unfortunately, we cannot refund through the entry system so this will have to be done by cheque. This is clearly quite a labour-intensive process so please please bear with us whilst we do it over the next couple of weeks.
Thanks to everyone for your support. We are as disappointed as everyone else over the cancellation especially as the weather looks reasonable for the weekend.
Hi all,
Just to let you know that all those who had entered the Festival should have received an e-mail today offering either a full refund or your entry to be rolled over to 2022.
If we do not hear from you by 1st April then we will send a refund shortly after this date.
If you had entered and have not received an e-mail please check your spam/junk folder and if you have still not received anything e-mail easterfestival@manx.net
Thanks
2021 Easter Festival cancelled
It is with great disappointment that the organising committee of the IQEQ (Isle of Man) Ltd Easter Festival of Running announce the cancellation of the 2021 event.
Chief Minister Howard Quayle has announced during this afternoon’s media briefing that the current lockdown will extend over the Easter period, which leaves us with no choice but to cancel this year’s Festival. The health of all is paramount at this time.
As an organising team we left it as long as we possibly could to try to get this year’s event on, but for the second year in a row the prevailing circumstances have made it impossible to go ahead with the Festival.
We sincerely thank everyone who has supported us during this extremely tricky time, especially our much-valued sponsors. Everyone who has entered the Festival will receive a full refund, or have the opportunity to roll their entry on to next year’s event. We will confirm how and when the refunds will be issued in due course.
The organising team remain absolutely committed to the Festival. The ongoing vaccine rollout, together with the Island’s recently-published Covid Exit Strategy, gives hope that the Island’s borders may be open by the autumn of this year. Our aim is to bring the Festival back in style in 2022 with a full complement of visiting athletes as well as all our locals.
Thank you all for your understanding and support.
Chris Quine
Festival Director
19 March 2021