The Boston Marathon will change the qualifying time for ALL mobility impaired athletes from 8 hours to 6 hours. In addition the field size is limited to 60 athletes.
This means the dreams of athletes with disabilities will be crushed, many of whom have been running Boston for years. Athletes with certain disabilities like cerebral palsy will be excluded altogether since most if not all cannot meet this arbitrary time.
Even some of the terrorist bombing victims who have run or want to run will not qualify as their injuries have made it extremely difficult to meet this new time like Adrianne Haslett and Rebekah Gregory.
I have run Boston as an MI athlete and can meet the new time. However, the MI time, unlike all other categories, does not make any adjustment for age at all.
Boston has quite a history of sex discrimination as we all know. Lessor known is the discrimination of the disabled, something that received far less attention and took equally huge efforts to attain entry.
We all understand Boston is special for because you do have to meet difficult qualifying times, but adjusting downward from hours instead of minutes precludes many deserving and extraordinary athletes from this race and it is a terrible, backwards precedent.