The organisers of the Etape Caledonia have responded to an article on the website of the Guardian newspaper which questioned its charitable credentials.
In the article, its author wondered how an event that has a charity - Marie Curie Cancer Care (MCCC) - as title sponsor can justify doing so when none of the entry fee (£61) actually ends up in its coffers.
The fee, he said, goes directly to the event organiser, IMG Challenger World, a division of one of the largest event and showbiz organisations in the world, leading him to question why they can't be more upfront on their website that none of the money goes to MCCC.
But its managing director James Robinson has hit back, saying that while they don't deny any of the entry fee goes directly to Marie Curie, they've never claimed it has done. What the partnership has done, he said, is raise over £220,000 so far this year for the charity and will rise again when the Etape Pennines, the latest addition to the Etape series, takes place later this year.
He added that the money generated is through its participants own fund-raising efforts and was both a model used successfully across the industry and one MCCC are "extremely happy" with.
"[The partnership] is designed to enable Marie Curie Cancer Care to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds per annum with minimised commercial risk while also not diverting valuable internal and limited resources away from the charity," said Robinson.
