Morgan Stanley (New York), Fidelity (Boston) and HSBC (London) exult on the Award Stage after learning they were the three top companies in the women’s division at the 2017 J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge Championship in Frankfurt, Germany.
The J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge® Championship visited its ninth city and fifth country in its 34-year history, and runners from five continents will bring back plenty of memories along with their passport stamps.
Frankfurt, Germany served as the host a first-time host for the Championship, and was up to the task. The 156 fastest full-time working runners in the world competed in the Championship one-half hour before the starting gun of the 25th running of the Frankfurt J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge, which had a staggering 63,776 participants.
The J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge Championship has been held on four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe and North America) and this visit to Frankfurt was entirely appropriate, according to one of the key decision makers for the Series.
“When we began discussing options for hosting the 2017 J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge Championship, we quickly realized there was only one appropriate choice,” said Frank Nakano, GM/Senior Vice President Sports and Entertainment Marketing at JPMorgan Chase, owner and operator of the Corporate Challenge Series.
“Frankfurt has been a tremendous success story since joining the Corporate Challenge Series in 1993, growing from a humble beginning of 527 entrants to one of the largest road races in the world,” Nakano continued. “We’re so proud that the Frankfurt business community has completely embraced our event for over 25 years, and now we are happy that companies from the other 12 cities in the Corporate Challenge Series can experience this amazing city and event.”
The J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge Championship was first held at the New Jersey Meadowlands in 1983. It moved to Wall Street in lower Manhattan for one year, 1984. It then began a 24-year run on Park Avenue, in front of JPMorgan Chase’s world headquarters. All those races were held on Saturday mornings, typically in October.
Since 2010, the Championship has adopted an “Olympic-style” rotation, and has been held on the same night of the regularly-scheduled Corporate Challenge. Eight different cities have now been visited in this rotation, following Johannesburg (2010), Singapore (2011), Chicago (2012), Rochester, NY (2013), London (2014), San Francisco (2015), New York City (2016) and Frankfurt (2017).
Each city in the Corporate Challenge Series – Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, London, New York, Rochester, San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and Syracuse – brought their full complement of qualified companies.
For the first time since the current format was installed in 2010, companies from the United States swept the men’s, women’s and mixed team categories. The winners spanned the two coasts of the country, with San Francisco taking the men’s and mixed crowns, and New York earning the women’s.
Google was the men’s team champion for the first time. The four-man team Benjamin Mears (17:09), Kirk Scheibelhut (17:25), Kevin Pierpoint (17:27) and Sean Pont (17:41), clocked a collective 1:09:42. That impressive effort held off a strong challenge from the BP of London (1:11:00) and Chicago’s Accenture (1:12:25).
Airbnb equally represented the Bay Area with pride, earning the mixed team title with a collective time of 1:19:20. It was the second consecutive year that San Francisco triumphed in this division at the Championship, with Strava earning the honors in New York’s Central Park.
The Airbnb team featured Andrew Lee (18:54), David Zimmerman (19:18), Stephanie Pancoast (19:33) and Abby Barnett (21:35). Their teamwork was enough to a pair of strong challenges from New York companies – JPMorgan Chase (1:19:34) and Memorial Sloan Kettering (1:21:36).
New York did itself one better in the women’s category, with Morgan Stanley winning the top prize with a four-woman time of 1:27:13. Alysia Dusseau (21:05), Christie Klauberg (21:09), Julie McBrien (21:36), and Lauren Bonchonsky (23:23) did the work. Morgan Stanley had also won the women’s Championship in 2011, beating the heat in Singapore.
Boston’s Fidelity Investments (1:28:26) and London’s HSBC (1:30:09) were second and third. HSBC had won the 2015 women’s honors in San Francisco.
Both San Francisco and New York have now won four total team titles in this Championship format, second best of any city. Johannesburg, South Africa, with 10 titles, is first.
The good news for the red, white and blue spread to the women’s individual race as Rochester’s Trisha Byler, running for DuPont, won the women’s individual title with a sterling time of 19:03 Boston’s Kaitlin Sheedy of Abt Associates (19:31) and Airbnb’s Pancoast (19:33) were second and third.
Host country Germany held its head high, also, with the first and second individual men finishers – Aaron Bienenfeld and Florian Neuschwander of Frankfurter Laufshop. Bienenfeld broke the tape in 16:30, Neuschwander 16:53. London’s Tom Jervis, representing BP, was third in 16:55.
Full individual and team results are available at this link with a search feature for your favorite runner or company.
Details on the 2018 J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge Championship will be announced following the completing of the 2017 Corporate Challenge Series.
