London Marathon is now an annual event

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Thousands of people have jogged through the normally quiet Sunday streets of the capital to compete in the first ever London marathon.

Pounding along the 26 mile (41.84 km) route from Greenwich Park, in south east London, to Buckingham Palace, 6,700 participants turned out in drizzle to complete the gruelling run.

The boom of a 25 lb (11.34 kg) cannon sent the marathon runners, ranging from a 15-year-old girl toseptuagenarians, on their way at 0900 BST.

The sportsmanship of the event was evident as American Dick Beardsley, 24, and Norwegian Inge Simonsen, 25, won the race crossing through the tape hand in hand after two hours, 11 minutes and 48 seconds.

Joyce Smith, a Briton was the first female to cross the finishing line, in 2:29:56.

About seven hours after the start Marie Dominque de Groot, 30, from Paris and David Gaiman, 47, from East Grinstead ran past the finish line holding hands as the final contestants across the line.

Most finished

An estimated 80% of those who took part are understood to have crossed the finish line and participants included celebrities such as Jimmy Saville, who raised ?0,000 for charity.

More than 22,000 people wanted to run but the figure was kept to 7,590 by police.

The race, taking in the banks of the Thames and the City of London, contained more turns than its New York sister event and was 30 yards longer than the official marathon distance.

At regular intervals 1,000 volunteer helpers marked the route, joined by 500 special constables, 26 first-aid stations and 300 St John Ambulance personnel while cardiac unit was on hand at Constitution Hill.

The marathon is the brainchild of Chris Brasher, former Olympic Steeplechaser and was organised with a budget of ?00,000 from which 2,000 foil blankets, 75 portable lavatories, 400 gallons of coffee and 50,000 plastic cups were supplied.

Calley could face the death penalty

The 27-year-old commander could receive the death penalty or life imprisonment after the massacre which saw US soldiers open fire on civilians in My Lai and neighbouring villages in central Vietnam in March 1968.

Lieutenant Calley was in charge of Charlie Company, a unit of the American Division's 11th Infantry Brigade, who were on a mission to root out the communist 48th Viet Cong Battalion fighters.

Brutal killings

The Viet Cong were not in the village and instead more than 500 unarmed civilians were brutally killed in an unprovoked attack by US troops.

Lieutenant Calley will be sentenced in the next few days after the verdict was announced at Fort Benning, Georgia today.

The jury of six army officers spent 13 days weighing up evidence from a four month trial.

They rejected his claim he was merely following orders in a military chain of command instilled in him since joining the army.

Lieutenant Calley faced four charges:

the murder of at least 30 "oriental human beings" at a junction of two trails
killing 70 others in a ditch
shooting a man who approached him with his hands raised begging for mercy
killing a child running from the ditch where the 70 died.

He was found guilty on the first three charges, although the number of the first was slashed from 30 to one because of conflicting evidence, and the death toll in the second charge was reduced to 20.

The final charge was reduced to assault with intent to kill a child of which he was found guilty.

Three of Lieutenant Calley's senior officers will be tried on charges arising from the massacre, two men junior to him have already been tried and acquitted and charges against 19 others have been dropped.

Charges came after the army commissioned an investigation into the cover-up of the massacre which became known as the Peers inquiry.

septuagenarian: A person who is 70 years old or between the ages of 70 and 80（七十至八十岁的人）