BOclassic

Plaque name: BOclassic

Location: Town Hall Bolzano, Piazza del Municipio, 5, 39100 Bolzano BZ, Italy

Plaque awarded: 27/12/2024

Reason: Plaque Category – Competition

Bolzano’s New Year’s Eve road race, which was the first of its kind in Europe, was originally called the Corsa Internazionale di San Silvestro but since 1996 has been known as the BOclassic Alto Adige.

A small group from the Runners Club Bolzano headed by Dr. Josef Mulser, Hans Pircher, Toni Ritsch, Toni Stampfer and Dr. Günther Andergassen organised the first New Year's Eve Run in Bolzano. They were simply looking to create a middle-distance competition opportunity in the winter and took inspiration from São Paulo’s world-famous Saint Silvester Road Race which had attracted the world’s best runners since 1925. That first race in Bolzano was for men only and approximately 100 runners took part but in 1977 a women’s race was staged for the first time.

The BOclassic, whose elite races today are run over 5km for women and 10km for men, holds a World Athletics Road Race Label.

The start and finish have over the years been consistently held in the main Waltherplatz. However, up to 1983, the course was different, approximately 13km for men and 6.5 km for women, and in 1977 and 1978, women ran the same 13km route as the men. The women’s winner in those two years was Germany’s Heide Brenner.

Sergiy Lebid of Ukraine and Kenya’s Edwin Soi with four wins each are the most successful male athletes, while Ethiopia’s Berhane Adere, also with four victories, is the best woman.

Currently Salvatore Antibo, who won the men’s race in 1988, the year in which he took Olympic 10,000m silver in Seoul, and Nadia Battocletti, who became Paris 2024 Olympic Games 10,000m silver medallist, and won the women’s race at the 49th BOclassic are Italy’s most recent victors.