---
title: "The Sydney Marathon medal has the wrong Allianz on it, and it is being handed out anyway"
description: "The finishers' medal for next Sunday's race carries the Allianz Arena in Munich rather than Sydney's Allianz Stadium. About 40,000 runners will get one. The organisers posted: You noticed. We noticed. We're human."
category: "Sports"
category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/sports
author: "Daniel Morales"
published: 2026-08-23T13:39:49.000Z
updated: 2026-08-23T13:39:49.000Z
canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/the-sydney-marathon-medal-has-the-wrong-allianz-on-it-and-it-is-being-handed-out
tags: ["sydney-marathon", "running", "australia"]
---
# The Sydney Marathon medal has the wrong Allianz on it, and it is being handed out anyway

The finishers' medal for next Sunday's race carries the Allianz Arena in Munich rather than Sydney's Allianz Stadium. About 40,000 runners will get one. The organisers posted: You noticed. We noticed. We're human.

The medal that about 40,000 runners will receive for finishing the Sydney Marathon on August 30 features the Allianz Arena. Not Sydney's Allianz Stadium. The one in Munich, [as Al Jazeera reports](https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/8/23/sydney-marathon-organisers-not-running-away-from-unfortunate-medal-error).

The organisers are not recalling them.

## How to handle a mistake

The response, posted on Instagram, is the reason this is worth writing about.

"We're not going to run from it," they said. "It was an unfortunate error, though it's certainly given everyone something to talk about this weekend, mostly in good humour."

And, separately: "You noticed. We noticed. We're human. See you in Sydney."

The medals will be given out as they are. The organisers described the result as "a beautiful medal, and now a little more unique".

There is a version of this in which a press office says the design is under review, blames a supplier, and quietly reissues at cost. What happened instead took about two sentences and appears to have cost them nothing. Institutions get very little credit for admitting small errors quickly, largely because so few of them do it, and the contrast with how organisations usually behave is the whole story here.

## The designer wanted that clear

Ambrose Killian, the First Nations artist who designed the medal, moved to establish what he was and was not responsible for.

He said in an Instagram story that he had "no involvement in the design or production" of the reverse side, where the error appears. His work was the lanyard and the front.

That is a fair thing to want on the record. An artist whose name is attached to a piece being mocked internationally has an obvious interest in specifying which part of it is his, and the organisers' own acceptance of blame supports him.

## Why the mix-up is almost understandable

Allianz is a German insurer that has bought naming rights to stadiums in several countries. There is an Allianz Arena in Munich, an Allianz Stadium in Sydney, and others besides. Somebody sourcing a stadium image for a Sydney medal and searching the obvious term would find the Munich one first, because it is the more famous building by a wide margin.

Which is a reminder that the most reliable way to get something wrong is to search for the right words and accept the first plausible answer.

The report gives no reaction from individual runners, and does not say how many medals have already been struck. We verified this account from a single publication.

## Sources

- [Sydney Marathon organisers not running away from 'unfortunate' medal error](https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/8/23/sydney-marathon-organisers-not-running-away-from-unfortunate-medal-error)