Will A Couple Hundred Thousand Turn Out for the Olympic Trials at 7:30 am?

cbax wrote: But I'm sure Mary is going to count all the homeless people, drug addicts and hookers on the route as cheering fans.

I can pretty well guarantee most of that population will be within a six block radius of my condo, as usual, and have zero chance of stumbling into Central Park that day.

There's got to be at least a hundred of us here on the board who are committed to watching the race, so that just leaves 199,900 other random New Yorkers. Sounds about right.

Cyrus wrote: Let me get this right. Are you saying that New York is not the way it's portrayed in that movie "The Warriors"?

Pretty close, but the Baseball Furies actually dress in rugby uniforms these days. And less graffiti on the trains.

NY Sub Elite, what would you say the Central Park course brings to the party to make up for its lack of the epic grandeur of the five borough marathon course?

And is it fair to say that, compared to - surely it's uncontested - the greatest trials ever held on American soil, the actual Olympic race in Beijing could even prove to be anticlimactic? Or should we wait to cross that bridge until our chickens hatch?

Central Park is accepted as the urban oasis lesser cities aspire to have and the trials will open the eyes of many who have yet to experience it and associate NY with canyons of glass and steel.

The choice of Central Park for the trials in my estimation, a stroke of genius and after all is said and done, will enable the NYRR and Mary to attain deity status in the running world, but the whole global community.

After the trials, which will be viewed by hundreds of thousands and beamed across the globe to millions, it's likely there will be shift in thinking for all Marathons. The trials in NY will become the standard of sophistication in athletic events. The Olympics are always special, but nothing compares to an event in New York.

watching the trials on tv would probably much more interesting(with proper coverage), however, i WILL be in CP.

Data Point 1:

The 2007 ING NYCM Program was just mailed to the NYRR membership (40,000, someone said?) and will be in the goodie bags at number pick-up. It had an insert -- a separate program for the USOTM, including spectator guide, key runenr profiles, course map w/mile & 5km marks, "expected arrival time" schedule for leaders at each point, etc etc.

Data Point 2:

This morning my nonrunner physical therapist (in NYC) asked me about "the Olympic trial race the day before." So there is awareness among nonrunners.

I said I was going, and that if the weather's nice it'll be a great thing to watch -- stay in once place with a chair and coffee and see them pass multiple times...a very competitive race in prospect...and it's over in time for brunch on the west side and a full day. He said he definitely wanted to watch.

Will he actually come out, and will others? That's the big question.

If 200,000 show up, great for the sport.

If fewer show up, more elbow room for me and the rest of the hardcore.

Joseph McVeigh wrote:

Data Point 2:

This morning my nonrunner physical therapist (in NYC) asked me about "the Olympic trial race the day before." So there is awareness among nonrunners.

That's a big sample size, I can see why you would use that opinion to conclude "there is awareness among nonrunners."

There's no possible way to handle a couple hundred thousand spectators in Central Park. Ridiculous assertion. Hopefully the NYRR's not paying NYPD to handle that many spectators.

Rumor is that the organizers from the Million...errrr....25,000 Man March will be in town to help take the census of spectators!

Relax, "amxnv", no need to owrry -- just assume my null hypothesis was "there is no awareness among nonrunners." That's been disproved, so you can rest statistically easy tonight.

Thanks for the peer review though -- very helpful.

Joseph McVeigh wrote: ...a very competitive race in prospect...

Joe! It's in Central not Prospect!!

Much as I love Brooklyn and our own Olmsted & Vaux park (their masterpiece), I'd hate for you to miss this race while the other 199k+ of us enjoy it.

I eagerly await THE NUMBERS GUY column in the WSJ on Monday following Marathon weekend, since I'm sure NYRRC will count:

* Everyone who would have been in Central Park anyway on Saturday morning, including walkers, tourists, etc.

* All 40,000+ NYCM entrants

* All of us LetsRun geeks running back and forth between the East and West sides, all donning our 2001 LetsRun.Com 2001 NYCM t-shirts

* Anyone walking in the vicinity of Central Park (5th Ave., CPW, CPS, etc.).

* Yada Yada

meltdown wrote:

* Yada Yada

Hey you bastard, I'll be there, you sob.

wejo wrote:

I don't think they could get 200,000 in the park no matter what (unless perhaps it was the day of the marathon, but that is basically Giants stadium *3). But I think with Mary throwing out the 200,000 number some people in the media will think "Oh this is a big event" (which it is)

They couldn't get 200,000 in Central Park at dawn on a Saturday morning if they were giving our free beer and lap dances.

Time for a serious reality check here.

Not to mention all of the people the runners will pass on the streets on their way to Central Park.

Maybe she meant that 200,000 will WATCH it. That includes net, TV and spectators and I think she'll be close to 25% of that number if she includes all three.

No friggin' way. The course will be populated by running geeks like us and people in the industry in town for the NYC Marathon, the regular crowd they normally get at the Today Show in midtown, and another couple of thousand, at most, here & there. 200,000? No friggin' way.

Of course, NYRRC numbers will reflect close to 1/2 million ;-)

Lynn Jennings in the booth!!???

Jaysus. I bet she's spending her time researching long and/or obscure words to force into her expert analysis.

I always laugh when I read these inflated estimates of crowds watching marathon events. Why don't people check the math ? The length of the lap is what....about 5 miles ? So call it 10 miles, allowing spectators to line the route on both sides. That's 20,000 people per mile or roughly 4 people for every linear foot of the route, on each side of the road.

The same goes for the "2 million" who watch the New York marathon every year (the London marathon makes the same claim). That works out as an average of 7 people per linear foot on both sides of the road, for the whole 26 miles.

Total nonsense.

Dave