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Organisers behind mass Australian sporting events like the City2Surf and Sydney running festival want a road map for their return out of the coronavirus.
Organisers behind events mass sporting events such as running festivals and ironman triathlons claim their absence is leaving a $1.1 billion hole in Australia's economy.
More than 250 organisations on Thursday banded together to attempt to lobby government for a road map out of the coronavirus and ask for financial relief.
The Australian Mass Participation Sporting Event Alliance (AMPSEA) say 8,500 events have been cancelled or postponed this year, affecting more than 3.1 million people and 11,000 workers.
The events range in size from the 84,000-person City2Surf held each October and Spartan obstacle course challenges down to fun runs, swims and other regional activities.
"A lot of the focus has been on community sport and big stadium stuff," ironman Oceania Group managing director Dave Beeche told AAP.
"But I think mass participation sports have a lot to offer communities that they operate in.
"We have been suffering pretty badly as you can imagine."
It comes as community sports get the tick of approval from July with the AFL and NRL now restarted.
Beeche believes lessons can be learned from New Zealand's emergence from lockdown and upcoming return to similar mass events, where contact tracing has been implemented.
Some options could include stretching out the time for events such as the City2Surf and November's Noosa triathlon allowing limited amounts of athletes to start in smaller waves.
"We have modelled all of those in terms of flow, rolling waves start, how we monitor the transition," Beeche said.
"We've looked at how we manage stations, in terms of how food and drink get delivered, what the finish line experience is like and educating on hygiene.
"The good thing about mass participation events is you know who is there, you know who is going to turn up.
"You have timing data, you know who started the race and who might have been in the start vicinity at the time in case there is some sort of breakout."
