MAJOR STATUS IN SYDNEY'S SIGHTS

Race director confident Sept I5 marathon ready to become 7th leg in elite series

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If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km around the streets of Sydney on Sept 15, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series.

The Sydney Marathon will become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established Majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year.

"We're really excited for Sunday to arrive," race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney on Sept 12.

"We're prepared, we're ready. All of our plans look good on paper, I feel we're ticking all the boxes. So we've just got to go out there now and deliver the event as per the plans and I'm sure we will meet the criteria."

Larden has been race director since 2005 when there were 2,300 finishers, and has overseen the growth to the 25,000 runners who will test themselves over a newly re-jigged course this weekend.