Officials at the London Marathon are unhappy that they were not given the right of reply during the Dispatches programme, which was broadcast on April 9.

David Bedford, the race director of the London Marathon, told insidethegames: "We have made a complaint to Ofcom.

"We will wait gauge their reaction before deciding what to do next."

This could involve legal action, although Bedford refused to comment on that. 

But  the last occasion that Dispatches investigated the London Marathon, in March 1991, they ended up losing a high-profile High Court libel case and having to pay £1.1 million ($1.6 million) in damages and costs to Chris Brasher and John Disley, the founders of the race.

They sued Dispatches after the programme alleged that it used the event to enrich themselves.

The latest Dispatches investigation focused on the amounts charities pay to the organisers to enter runners in the event, which was held yeterday and had a record 36,549 finishers and was won by Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede and Russian Liliya Shobukhova.

This year's race is expected to raise more than £50 million for hundreds of charities, pushing the total raised since it was first held in 1981 beyond half-a-billion pounds.

Bedford said: "We have received lots of comments from people that said it [Dispatches] it was the most one-sided programme they had ever seen."

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