London Marathon runners to be greeted by Marie Curie’s poignant Daffodil Runner

A running figure covered with 557 steel daffodils, representing the number of people who die every day in the UK without the end-of-life care they need, will greet TCS London Marathon runners as they collect their bib numbers for Sunday’s event.

The flower is the symbol of Marie Curie, the event’s charity of the year, and The Daffodil Runner sculpture has been designed to make people think about the “growing scale of the end-of-life care crisis”.

Dr Sarah Holmes, the charity’s chief medical officer, has been working in palliative care for nearly 25 years and told the Press Association: “There are still gaps, people are still struggling to access the care and support that they need, and it just feels like that isn’t improving significantly really.”

She added: “Each one of those daffodils represents a person, a human with family, who are left without that care and that ripple effect for those families left behind afterwards is huge.”

Dr Holmes, a consultant in palliative medicine who works at Marie Curie Hospice in Bradford, West Yorkshire, said a lack of good end-of-life care can mean “people struggling at home, in pain, without medicines that they need”.

She said family members may not not know what to do to help and may not be able to access GPs or district nurses in a timely way, or know who to call for support, so end up calling an ambulance.

That can mean “ending up in hospital or in an ambulance at the end of your life which is just not where of any of us would choose to spend the last days of our life, in a hospital, on a trolley in a corridor, and this is happening to real people right now”.

She said she hopes the Daffodil Runner will “make people stop and think”.

“As a society, we need to get more comfortable talking about death and dying. Talking about it doesn’t make it happen. But talking about it, thinking about it, planning and preparing for it can ensure that people have a good death.

“It reflects very poorly on us in society that people at the end of lives are not getting the care and support they need.”

She added: “Having good quality palliative end-of-life care makes such a difference to that person at the time because you can’t go back and do it again.”

She said there is also a ripple effect for people’s families: “Being able to look back and think that my loved one had a good and peaceful death is so profound for people.

“If they are remembering the difficulties and the challenges, that scars them as well.”

The life-size sculpture was hand-crafted by Alan Ross, a former care worker turned steel artist. It took more than 200 hours to create.

Mr Ross, a self-taught artist based in Swansea, told the Press Association: “I want people to smile, I want people to think about the significance of each flower being somebody who’s passed away.

“That’s what shook me when I looked at the number of flowers lined up on my work bench the other day, each one of those is a personal tragedy and that upset me a bit.

“That’s a good reaction to have, I think, to realise there’s a significance. It’s not just a nice piece of work for a room, it has got a resonance and a feeling to it.”

The Daffodil Runner was unveiled on Tuesday at Tower Bridge, the mid-way point along the TCS London Marathon route, and will be at ExCel London from Wednesday to inspire marathon runners as they collect their bib numbers.

After the marathon, it will move to Marie Curie Hospice, Cardiff and the Vale in Penarth.

Ballroom dancers and TV personalities Curtis and AJ Pritchard, who are running the marathon for Marie Curie, helped to unveil the sculpture.

“We lost our wonderful Nana during the pandemic, and like so many families we’ve been living with that grief ever since,” they said.

“Grief doesn’t have an end line. It stays with you and you learn how to cope with it, and channelling that love and loss into something positive has been incredibly powerful.

“Running the TCS London Marathon is both a tribute to our Nana and a way to stand alongside others who are experiencing similar heartache.

“We’re proud to support Marie Curie’s vital work and hope our efforts will help ensure more people receive the care, comfort and dignity they deserve at the end of life.”

Dr Holmes will be running as part of a trio who will be tied at the ankle as they attempt to become the fastest female team to complete a four-legged marathon.

She is running with Sam Cheverton, Marie Curie’s director of strategy and impact, and Helen Caldwell, a nurse consultant in hepatology who works at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

She told the Press Association: “We’ve all run marathons before, we all run for pleasure and Sam and I both knew we wanted to do the London Marathon because we were charity partner, it just felt really important to do it.

“But we knew that having run marathons before people were going to want us to challenge ourselves if we were going to get some sponsorship from people to do it, hence coming up with the record attempt.”

They need to finish in under five hours, faster than Dr Holmes’ personal best, and she added: “Individually we are very determined people, so I feel confident that, come hell or high water, we will cross the finish line.

“I’m not completely confident that we will cross the finish line in under five hours as that feels like a huge challenge.”

A recent study by Marie Curie found that across the UK, almost one in three people do not receive the end-of-life care they need. For those living in disadvantaged communities, the gap is even wider.

Every three minutes, someone dies without proper support – nearly 200,000 people each year.

The charity said that by 2050, that number could exceed a quarter of a million.

Marie Curie provides expert end-of-life care for people with any illness they are likely to die from in the community, at its hospices and through its free national support line on 0800 090 2309. It also offers support for family and friends.

To support the charity’s TCS London Marathon runners to raise £2 million to fund care, comfort and dignity for those at the end of life, and support for their loved ones, visit: mariecurie.org.uk/tcslondonmarathon

Dr Holmes’s fundraising link is: https://2026tcslondonmarathon.enthuse.com/pf/quad-squad-c1828