London Marathon entries break 400,000 mark

(Reuters) - More than 400,000 runners have entered the ballot for next year's London Marathon, breaking the event's own world record for registrations.

The final total of 414,168 applicants from Britain and overseas represents a 7.3 percent increase on last year's 386,050 bidding for a place at the world's most popular marathon.

Just under 55 percent of British entrants have never participated in a marathon and for a second consecutive year, the majority of those are women.

"One of our goals is to inspire people to take up sport, and it's fantastic that more than 190,000 people from the UK have been inspired to apply to run a marathon for the first time in 2019," event director Hugh Brasher said in a statement.

Entrants will be notified of the result of the ballot in October.

The marathon is on April 28, 2019.

(Reporting by Hardik Vyas in Bengaluru,; Editing by Neville Dalton)