The race organisers accepted the blame for the mishap and, although James Moiben was the first to finish the complete course (2:12:15), Cherono was declared the official winner as he held a large leading margin before the incident.

[13] In 2021, although participation was initially restricted to permanent residents of Beijing and invited domestic elite athletes, and strict coronavirus protocols were put in place, the marathon was postponed days before the scheduled date of October 31 due to an outbreak of the Delta variant of the virus.

The events organizers said that Japanese couldn't enter this year because of "safety concerns" due to tension between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands dispute.

[21] This move attracted a large amount of criticism and on the night of November 10 the option for Japanese runners re-appeared, although there was no Japanese-language version available, which had been available the previous year.

Ethiopian runner Abebe Mekonnen equaled this time in 1988 and some commentators (including the Association of Road Racing Statisticians) regard this as the true course record, in respect of reports that the 1986 course was around 400 m short of the marathon distance.

[8] After 27 years unbeaten, Taisuke Kodama's course record was improved by Tadese Tola in 2013 as the Ethiopian beat the previous mark by nineteen seconds with 2:07:16 hours.