Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Mixed-Up Israeli Runner Starts London Marathon at Finish by Mistake

A police officer from Haifa was the last runner to start this year’s London Marathon after he mixed up the finish line for the starting line.

Interviewed by the BBC near the starting line, Hagai Penkar explained that he showed up first at the finish line on Sunday after plugging the wrong information into his internet browser and then lost 38 minutes dealing with London traffic.

Running the 26 miles in 5 hours, 12 minutes and 18 seconds, Penkar finished ahead of some 8,000 runners, according to Haaretz. The race had 39,045 registered runners, including eight Israelis.

Penkar looked on the silver lining of his mistake, telling the journalist: “It took me time to get to the start line, but I met you and I’m speaking and I’m fresh.”

Noticing his interviewer was out of breath from running alongside him, Penkar told her: “Start running more so next time you will be in better shape.”

He added: “I love the United Kingdom and wish everybody in the race, feel well at the end line and a good time.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.