Takeover Of Website For Arlington 9/11 Memorial Race Slows Pace Of Registrations

ARLINGTON, VA — Organizers of the annual 9/11 Memorial 5K in Arlington, scheduled to take place in September, have created a new website after the original registration link for the 5K race was taken by an anonymous Russian buyer.

As of Friday, the number of runners who had registered for the race stood at only 200, according to organizers. The 9/11 Memorial 5K typically sees about 1,000 people sign up to run the race, which has a course that starts in Pentagon City and goes around the Pentagon.

Over the last two decades, the race has raised enough money to allow organizers to donate about $1 million to 9/11-related charities. The first Arlington 9/11 Race was held in September 2002, with 2,600 runners, and raised about 40,000.

When the organizers forgot to renew the domain name for the 5K race last fall, a buyer almost immediately took over the page, translated it into Russian and demanded a large sum of money from the race organizers to get it back, ARLnow reported. The race organizers chose not to pay the new owner of the domain name and instead bought a new “.us” domain of the same name, according to the report.

The 9/11 Memorial 5K is hosted each year by the Arlington County police and fire departments, sheriff’s office and the Emergency Communications Center.

"We’re putting out blasts on our Instagram, our Facebook," race director Josh Milfeit told FOX 5. “We’re trying all kinds of things to just get it out there that we’re still doing the race, we’re doing the race we’ve done every year for 21 years now, and our registration is super low because technical difficulties is the easiest way to say it.”

This year’s race will be held on Saturday, Sept. 9 at 6 p.m. The race will begin and end at the DoubleTree Hotel at 300 Army Navy Drive in Arlington.

Visit the race’s new website, Arlington911race.us, to sign up for the race or donate money.