Medal 'magic' comes together just hours before Sunday's Calgary Marathon

In the days leading up the Servus Calgary Marathon, organizers were resigned to the conclusion there would be no medals for participants at the finish line at Sunday's race.

In fact, marathon organizers sent an email to that effect early last week, telling runners not to get their hopes up.

But with the hard work of hundreds of people at five organizations in two countries and in three time zones, a medal miracle occurred, organizers said.

"Honestly, it's like magic that they were here in time," said Kirsten-Ellen Fleming, executive director of the marathon and of Run Calgary.

"I think people were just so excited. It was such a great day, and then to have that surprise at the finish line was extra special."

Early last week, race organizers heard they had about a one per cent chance of receiving the 7,140 medals on time. 

They'd ordered the medals early this year — in January — worried about global shipping challenges, but the vessel carrying them couldn't dock when it arrived in Vancouver on April 8, organizers said in a news release.

Due to backlogs, the ship had to wait an additional six weeks after reaching port before being added to the queue to be unloaded.

Behind the scenes, workers at Global Container Terminal Canada, which operates GCT Deltaport, hadn't given up on digging out the shipment. 

"Once we knew what was happening and where the container was, we did everything in our control to make it happen," said Chris Ng, vice-president of marketing and sales from GCT Canada.

"The vessel ops group strategically planned the unloading of this ship in a way to ensure it was prioritized and everyone from the terminal VP to the team worked to get the container off early Saturday morning."

From there, U.S.-based