By David Monti
September 15, 2010
(c) Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
NEW YORK (15-Sep) -- New York Road Runners' founder Fred Lebow had a
keen sense of timing, and bravado. The Romanian immigrant who spoke
heavily accented English saw the potential to take the New York City
Marathon to the streets in 1976, transforming the event into the
prototype for all of today's big city marathons.
But Lebow, who died of cancer in 1994 at age 62, also loved the track,
and his idea in 1981 to gather most of the world's best middle distance
runners for a straight, downhill mile on Fifth Avenue here was an
equivalent stroke of genius. The race will be held for the 30th time on
Sunday, September 26.
"A race down Fifth Avenue will be like a modern day equivalent to a race
on Mt. Olympus," said New York's mayor at the time, Edward I. Koch, who
embraced hyperbole as much as Lebow. "It's an exciting concept."
The event was formally called the Pepsi Challenge Fifth Avenue Mile.
Lebow got the idea after watching the 1980 Millrose Games during which
American Mary Decker set the world indoor record for 1500m.
"My first thought was 'what a shame that only 18,000 people could see
this,'" Lebow told New York Running News in 1981. "What would it be
like to have 100,000 or 200,000 watching?"
Lebow mulled over the idea for a year, then pitched it to Irish middle
distance star Eamonn Coghlan after he won the Wanamaker Mile here in
1981.
"As I was walking over to the Penn Plaza Hotel with Fred Lebow (he said)
'it's a shame we don't get more people to see you guys compete,'"
Coghlan recalled during an international teleconference yesterday.
When Lebow told Coghlan about his idea to run athletes in a one mile
race down Fifth Avenue, Coghlan said he replied, "'Why don't you finish
it at the Irish Tourist Board where I was working at the time?'"
The Irish Tourist Board was located at Fifth Avenue and 48th Street,
which meant the race would block cross-town traffic at too many streets.
Instead, Lebow convinced the city to hold the race parallel to Central
Park, starting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at East 82nd Street,
and finishing at East 62nd Street in sight of the Plaza Hotel. That
would mean closing only a handful of cross streets.
"I though it was a great idea," said Steve Scott, who held the American
record for the mile until Alan Webb broke it in 2007. "You really
didn't know what the reception was going to be like in the city."
It was huge. ABC set up nine cameras on the course and covered the race
live. Britain's Steve Ovett, the world record holder at the time,
committed to the race, and BBC agreed to carry it live, too (Ovett later
cancelled at the last minute due to a viral infection). Lebow, perhaps
the greatest athlete recruiter ever, got Coghlan, Scott, Steve Cram,
John Walker, Tom Byers, Mike Boit, Ray Flynn and five other top athletes
to commit to the race. It was one of the greatest fields for a mile
ever assembled.
"Miling at the time was perhaps the biggest story in the U.K.," said
Steve Cram, now an athletics commentator for the BBC. "There was huge
interest, huge interest in this new event. I don't know if we felt like
guinea pigs, but we didn't know what to expect."
The gun went off and the first quarter mile, slightly downhill, clicked
by in 53.2 seconds. Flynn recalls that everybody was running all-out
right from the start.
"Miling was so exciting and a great many records had been broken at the
time," Flynn said yesterday. "We had never run in a straight line. We,
as athletes, wanted to see how fast we could run in a straight line.
As Steve (Scott) said, we didn't have experience. We just went out at
the gun. Everybody just ran as fast as they could."
The course has a small rise in the second quarter, cresting just before
the halfway point. Runners can see the finish line ahead, but the
distance can be very hard to judge. Scott found out the hard way.
"The one thing I remember is that you can't see the finish line from the
start line," said Scott, now a college coach in California. "You come
over the hill and you can see the finish... and in reality it was over
800 meters away, and I just ran out of gas."
But the South African-born American Sydney Maree still had plenty left
in the tank. Running on the left side of Fifth Avenue, he angled
towards the finish line with 50 meters to go, dusting the field to clock
3:47.52, a time which remains the event record, one of the
longest-standing significant marks in all of road running. Boit was
second in 3:49.59, and Dr. Thomas Wessinghage of West Germany was third
(3:50.48). Cram finished fourth, Flynn fifth, Walker sixth, Scott
seventh and Coghlan ninth. Former USATF CEO Craig Masback was 13th and
last.
Yes, there was also a women's race (Lebow was a fierce advocate for
women's running). The University of Oregon's Leann Warren got the win
in a swift 4:25.31 over Canada's Brit McRoberts (4:28.34) and England's
Christina Boxer (4:28.90).
The race in it's current form, now called the Continental Airlines Fifth
Avenue Mile, consists of 16 heats (last year's event had 3,796
finishers). The racing begins with open sections in the morning, then
moves to age-group competition before the four invited sections in the
early afternoon. The New York Road Runners Road Mile Championships
showcase the best locally-based athletes, then the professional women
and men provide the grand finale. This year's event has two-time
Olympic medallist Bernard Lagat of Tucson, Ariz., facing off against
2008 Olympic silver medallist Nick Willis of New Zealand, USA indoor
1500m champion Leo Manzano of Austin, Tex., defending champion Andy
Baddeley of England, and USA mile record holder, Alan Webb of Portland,
Ore. Last year's world championships 1500m bronze medallist and
defending champion, Shannon Rowbury of San Francisco, leads the women's
field.
Like Lebow and Allan Steinfeld before her, New York Road Runners
president and CEO Mary Wittenberg is equally committed to elite athletes
AND fitness runners. Looking back yesterday, she is still awed by what
Lebow had accomplished with the Fifth Avenue Mile. He set the bar
high, right from the start.
"When you look back on the first race that you four were in... you made it something spectacular from the start," she said.
NOTE: A complete winners list from the Continental Airlines Fifth
Avenue Mile is attached. Race Results Weekly provides professional
athletes consulting to the New York Road Runners --Ed.
Lebow's Fifth Avenue Mile Dream Still Alive at 30
Winners of the Continental Airlines Fifth Avenue Mile Men / Women 1st 1981 26-Sep: Sydney Maree (USA) 3:47.52 / Leann Warren (USA) 4:25.31 2nd 1982 26-Sep: Tom Byers (USA) 3:51.35 / Debbie Scott (CAN) 4:23.96 3rd 1983 03-Sep: Steve Scott (USA) 3:49.77 / Wendy Sly (GBR) 4:22.66 4th 1984 22-Sep: John Walker (NZL) 3:53.62 / Maricica Puica (ROU) 4:24.35 5th 1985 28-Sep: Frank O'Mara (IRL) 3:52.28 / Lynn Williams (CAN) 4:25.03 6th 1986 13-Sep: Jose-Luis Gonzalez (ESP) 3:53.52 / Maricica Puica (ROU) 4:19.48 7th 1987 26-Sep: Peter Elliott (GBR) 3:53.52 / Kirsty Wade (GBR) 4:22.70 8th 1988 15-Oct: Steve Scott (USA) 3:53.43 / Mary Slaney (USA) 4:20.03 9th 1989 23-Sep: Peter Elliott (GBR) 3:52.95 / Paula Ivan (ROU) 4:28.25 10th 1990 22-Sep: Peter Elliott (GBR) 3:47.83 / PattiSue Plumer (USA) 4:16.68 11th 1991 19-Oct: Matthew Yates (GBR) 3:56.75 / Alisa Hill (USA) 4:31.57 12th 1992 26-Sep: Itamar Da Silva (BRA) 4:00.37 / Alicia Kelly (USA) 4:43.07 13th 1993 02-Oct: Ron Harris (USA) 3:58.0 / Lauren Gubicza (USA) 4:37.9 14th 1994 02-Oct: Jason Pyrah (USA) 3:52.3 / Regina Jacobs (USA) 4:27.8 15th 1995 30-Sep: Isaac Viciosa (ESP) 3:47.8 / Sinead Delahunty (IRL) 4:25.2 16th 1996 28-Sep: Isaac Viciosa (ESP) 3:53.67 / Paula Radcliffe (GBR) 4:26.69 17th 1997 27-Sep: Isaac Viciosa (ESP) 3:53.66 / Paula Radcliffe (GBR) 4:22.96 18th 1998 26-Sep: Isaac Viciosa (ESP) 3:55.59 / Regina Jacobs (USA) 4:20.8 19th 1999 25-Sep: Ben Kapsoiya (KEN) 4:05.4 / Alicia Harvey (USA) 4:41.3 20th 2000 23-Sep: Jason Lund (USA) 4:03.9 / Kim McGreevy (USA) 4:38.9 21st 2001 29-Sep: John Itati (KEN) 4:02.3 / Kim McGreevy (USA) 4:39.8 22nd 2002 28-Sep: Leonard Mucheru (KEN) 3:55.2 / Grace Njoki (KEN) 4:37.7 23rd 2003 07-Sep: John Itati (KEN) 3:56 / Theresa Du Toit (RSA) 4:53 24th 2004 14-Aug: Elarbi Khattabi (MAR) 4:10 / Andrea Haver (USA) 4:51 25th 2005 24-Sep: Craig Mottram (AUS) 3:49.9 / Carmen Douma-Hussar (CAN) 4:28.0 26th 2006 30-Sep: Kevin Sullivan (CAN) 3:54.1 / Sara Hall (USA) 4:28.0 27th 2007 29-Sep: Alan Webb (USA) 3:52.7 / Carmen Douma-Hussar (CAN) 4:22.8 28th 2008 21-Sep: Nick Willis (NZL) 3:50.5 / Lisa Dobriskey (GBR) 4:18.6 29th 2009 26-Sep: Andy Baddeley (GBR) 3:51.8 / Shannon Rowbury (USA) 4:23.3 Most Winning Performances by Nation: MEN - USA = 8 ESP = 5 GBR = 5 WOMEN - USA = 14 GBR =
|
|
|
Comments, questions, suggestions, story you'd like to submit? Email us