Richard Donovan, runner, commercial race organizer, and sports administrator, becomes the first person in history to run a marathon at both the North and South Pole, completing his North Pole run on April 5, 2002.

Donovan is born in Galway in 1966. He organises and is first to complete the inaugural South Pole Marathon in January 2002, then completes the first marathon-length run at the North Pole in April of that year in a time of 3:48:12. He uses the publicity from this to launch his North Pole Marathon venture, offering runners an adventure tourism experience, with the 2018 event costing €16,000.

Between January 30 and February 5, 2009, Donovan claims a world’s best for running seven marathons, on seven different continents, in fewer than seven days. Starting February 1, 2012 he improves on this by completing the 7 on 7 in under 120 hours.

Donovan also completes transcontinental runs across North America in 2015 and Europe in 2016, adding South America in 2017. In addition to the North Pole Marathon, he organizes a number of other commercial events.