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Team Memmert Victory at biggest company run

At least since the 11th of July, the comparatively small "Memmert" company sports team has gained nationwide, if not worldwide, prominence. After our athletes surprisingly became the German champions at the company run last year, Sebastian Reinwand, Joseph Katib, Michael Batz and Matthias Grosser could also hold their ground at the J.P. Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge Run, the world's biggest company run and, with almost 72,000 participants, the biggest run in Europe. The team classification winners will now be invited to the finals in Sydney/Australia.

The requirements to join the run, which has a total of 265,000 participants and involves around 8,000 companies, are tough. To even qualify for the run, the athletes must be employed by the company on a 20-hour week basis as a minimum. All of the four high-achieving Memmert colleagues fulfilled the criteria. In the banking metropolis of Frankfurt, the athletes of our comparatively small medium-sized company with about 250 employees had to deal with teams from Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Bank and Lufthansa, among others. 

The warm, humid weather conditions made the 5.6 km long run through the city centre of Frankfurt rather difficult. It was no surprise, however, that the exceptional runner Sebastian Reinwand, who by now is one of the top long-distance runners in Germany, easily achieved an overall victory. Two seconds later, his team colleague Joseph Katib crossed the finishing line as the runner-up. With 17:24 minutes, Michael Batz came in seventh in the overall ranking. Matthias Grossner made it to the finishing line in 18:24 minutes as 32nd.

A special highlight for the Memmert athletes was the starting signal and the victory ceremony conducted by the Olympic champion Kati Witt, who had taken over patronage for the run together with the javelin throw world champion Steffi Nerius and other star athletes. Due to their surprising overall victory in Frankfurt, the four athletes can now look forward to an invitation to the final run in Sydney in November, where they will compete with the winners of the other 13 metropolises, such as New York or London.