2012 Olympic Marathon Course in London's original 2005 bid for the Games and broke with the normal Olympic tradition that the race finishes inside the main Olympic Stadium. The 2012 Summer Olympics was the third to be held in London. The stated distance of the marathon at the London 1908 Summer Olympics – 26 miles and 385 yards, later converted to metric units as 42.195 kilometres – formed the basis of the standard distance adopted by International Association of Athletics Federations in 1921. The route, as confirmed in October 2010, starts on The Mall about 350 metres from the Victoria Memorial and has four
Athens Classic Marathon point for both the 1896 and 2004 Olympic marathons. In 1982, the organisers dedicated the race to Grigoris Lambrakis, an athlete and Member of the Greek Parliament, whose murder in the 1960s has become an inspirational cause for advocates of human rights. Since 2007 the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races has organised an annual International Marathon Symposium in Marathon town the day prior to the race. Taking from the tradition of the Olympic Torch, the race features the Marathon Flame, which is lit at the Tomb of the Battle of Marathon and carried to the stadium in Marathon