The Wyss Center’s six-person relay team stormed past the finish line beneath leaden skies at the Harmony Geneva Marathon for Unicef on Sunday.

This year’s Harmony Geneva Marathon for Unicef was the largest yet with 17,404 runners and walkers ranging in age from 7 to 86 years-old participating in a full weekend of races.

Martina Coscia, George Kouvas, Tracy Laabs, Maria Primiceri, Aude Yulzari and Ali Zaidi made up the Wyss Center team, each running sections of the marathon course. The team came 135 out of 329 teams and completed the race in 3 hours 47 minutes.

Live music played along length of the route and spectators turned out in large numbers despite the threat of rain to support the runners.

A record breaking weekend

The winner of the 2017 Geneva Marathon, William Yegon of Kenya, set a new course record completing the 42.195km in a blistering 2h10m 31s, beating the previous course record set in 2014 by 29 seconds.

The Wyss Center team joined other national and international organizations taking part in the event. In total 113 nationalities were represented including Swiss, French, British, Italian, Spanish, American, Brazilian, Portuguese, Belgian, Polish, Indian, Japanese and Moroccan.

Funds collected by runners have allowed Unicef projects to install 483 hydraulic pumps in developing countries throughout the world.