Record Insurance

Background:

In athletics, one of the possible distances to run is 15,000 meters or 15k (in the picture you see the leader in an annual 15k - race in the Netherlands. Please see Wikipedia article below). For this type of run, 15k on a street track, there is a world record, as there are records for all other distances that are run in athletics (e.g. the marathon). In such a race, the organizing committee will usually pay a significant amount of money as a bonus to the winner if he or she succeeds in setting a new world record. These amounts of money can get quite large in order to attract top runners: in the race shown in the picture there was a 25,000 euro bonus if the winner succeeded in improving the 15k world record – which, by the way, he (un)fortunately did not achieve. Had he done so, there would have been a major financial problem for the organizing committee, since they had not purchased any insurance.