Phallic medal stuns marathon runners

After completing 26 gruelling miles in soaring heat, everyone who finished the Edinburgh Marathon will have expected their hard-earned medal to be a talking point among family and friends. Showing off the medallion should have been a chance to bask in the glory of their athletic achievement, prompting a string of admiring comments and expressions of concern about the state of their blistered feet.

Instead, many of the 23,000 runners who pounded the city’s streets at the weekend have found their medal has produced some unexpected responses. Some people have giggled, others have shuffled their feet uncomfortably and seemed lost for words, while others have pointed and shouted an obscenity. The puzzling response only becomes clear when the medal – which features the acronym EMF, standing for Edinburgh Marathon Festival, against a backdrop of Edinburgh Castle – is held in a certain way.



It suddenly looks startlingly like the Kintyre peninsula or, more bluntly, a tacky souvenir from a raucous hen party. Edinburgh Marathon debutante Andy Goodson, from Tiptree in Essex, said he was surprised that the designers failed to spot a potential issue. “My first impression of the medal was that it was a weighty piece of race bling,” he said. “When I had recovered enough to look at the medal, I realised it was somewhat phallic in shape. Turning it around caused anyone nearby to notice it as well.

“I am a little surprised nobody saw the potential issue, especially as it is designed to have your time added to the back. Someone must have looked at it from that side before it was commissioned.” EMF director Neil Kilgour said he expected organisers would be hearing jokes for years to come. The design brief for the medal “included detailed measurements,” he said, but no-one had noticed the potential for embarrassment. He added: “It is too early to say whether there will be a redesign of a medal for 2013.”