Running towards change.

To make it clear, our challenging running event will not cease to exist. It will remain here for all of you to conquer for many years to come.

However, during the past two months, we have been working hard to give our beloved organization and event, a much-needed makeover to bring them closer to this day and age. We also want to preserve our heritage, values, and commitment to each and every one of you to deliver a world-class event, organized by a team of volunteers whose main aim is the promotion of all that is Gozitan and more importantly, the promotion of inclusive sports for all.

During the past years, our name was not entirely accurate. We used to market ourselves as the ‘Gozo Half Marathon’ when in reality, we offer a wider range of road races and walkathons that cater to a much wider spectrum of athletes. Apart from our ever-growing number of road races, we also work with a number of different causes through our ‘Fair Play’ group and we felt that this was not given as much importance as it deserved.

Hence, came the name ‘Run Gozo’ which perfectly encompasses two of the things we love the most. Running and our special island. This will serve as the main name of our non-profit whilst subdividing our road races and philanthropic work into two different groups as follows:

Il-Ġirja t’Għawdex and Fair Play.

Why ‘Il-Ġirja t’Għawdex’? The idea behind Il-Ġirja t’Għawdex was to pay tribute to our heritage through our unique Maltese language. Moreover, whenever we asked, the reply from nearly all locals was – “ġejna niġru l-ġirja t’Għawdex” (literal translation – “we came for the Gozitan run”– so why not? Moreover, the logo for our road races will be the one above (next to the Run Gozo logo) which celebrates our heritage, voluntarism, and all that is Gozo. Various elements include the three hills and our establishment date which solidifies our status as the oldest organized running events in the Maltese Islands.

Furthermore, although we have done a lot of philanthropic work in the past, we also aim to further energize our Fair Play section through new collaborations with emerging local and longstanding NGOs which also hold our values dear. Past work can be analyzed through the below links:

rungozo.org/giving –fairplay.rungozo.org

Whilst we invite you to access our brand-new website and branding, we hope that you understand why we do this. We want to further push the local running scene to a higher level whilst ensuring a great on-the-day experience for all our participants.

We also invite you to register for the 2024 event, now that all applications are open.

See you very soon and stay tuned!

The Run Gozo Team