Malmo leads Al Sal at NYCM

Question for you Malmo ... obviously you were running very well over longer distances at that point in you career, saw you when you ran that great 20k in New Haven. Having said that, you were such a strong steeple guy, what pushed you to move up? I would have figured that if you did move up that 5k/10k would have been the logical move.

Read the mathematical calculation - not a prayer that you are correct and crowds were near 2 Million

"Maybe not 2 million, but not that far off."

Your other point is intersting - but no running crowds are 1M or 2M at marathons - even if you include the folks in apartments in 1st Ave!!

That I did not know. I always thought growing up that Manhattan alone had 8 million people living there. Thanks for the claraification.

Get Real Real wrote:

Salazar is so freaking cool and was such a stud.

What a great champion.

Carlos Lopes was the cool one, checking out the marathon distance in advance of Los Angeles.

malmo wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

I do remember watching the race on tv in 1982. The crowds were massive. Maybe not 2 million, but not that far off.

At least a 4 fold exaggeration, probably more. They do the same thing with the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade too.

and New Year's Eve in Times Square.

J.R. wrote:

Get Real Real wrote:

Salazar is so freaking cool and was such a stud.

What a great champion.

Carlos Lopes was the cool one, checking out the marathon distance in advance of Los Angeles.

I think Lopes ran to 20 miles that day.

Gonna agree with malmo, a good 20-30% of the adults in that city was likely either up late the night before working, drinking and partying, buying or selling drugs or gangbanging.

A good deal of the rest couldn't be bothered to dress up on a cold morning to stand around for hours to watch skinny runners moving by. Keep in mind that the 8 million residents is probably 20-30% children and you don't see many of those as spectators, so that limits your spectator pool down to maybe 5-6 million.

No way 40-50% of the adult poplulation of NYC shows up for the marathon. I'd wager that a decent portion who would care enough to get up and watch are in the race themselves.

Granted that was a mass of spectators, but nowhere near 2 million.

Malmo--for those of us weak at facial recognition, please identify some of the guys in the photo.

malmo wrote:

Here's the crew at about 10 miles.

Image:

http://i45.tinypic.com/16j0zuu.jpg

Montesquieu wrote:

Malmo--for those of us weak at facial recognition, please identify some of the guys in the photo.

1 2:09:29 Alberto Salazar (1)

2 2:09:33 Rodolfo Gomez MEX (2)

3 2:11:54 Daniel Schlesinger (3)

4 2:12:44 Ryszard Marczak POL

5 2:12:48 David Murphy GBR (5)

6 2:13:22 Thomas Raunig

7 2:13:29 George Malley (7)

8 2:13:43 Jose Gomez MEX (8)

9 2:13:51 Martti Kiiholma FIN (9)

10 2:14:00 Dean Matthews

11 2:14:22 Ralph Serna

12 2:14:23 Ricardo Ortega

13 2:14:33 Ralf Salzmann GER

14 2:15:00 Armando Cendejas

15 2:15:02 Kjell-Erik Stahl SWE (15)

16 2:15:56 Adrian Leek GBR (16)

17 2:15:56 Anatoly Aryukov USSR (17)

18 2:16:09 Benji Durden (18)

31 2:18:12 Dick Beardsley (31)

DNF Jon Sinclair (NT)

DNF Carlos Lopes POR (NT)

Another image later in the race (note Beardsley out the backdoor)

Didn't Lopes fall before he dropped out? I thought he tripped in a pothole.

The person I identified as Kjell-Erik Stahl is actually Ryszard Marczak.

Stahl is right behind Durden.

Precious Roy wrote:

It is also interesting to see that in 1982 47 runners finished under 2:20; 167 under 2:30; 1597 under 3:00. In 2009, 20 under 2:20; 59 under 2:30; 999 under 3:00. And Chicago 2009 only had 834 under 3:00 and similar numbers at :20 and :30.

I don't know the numbers, but remember that back in 1982 or 3 I doubt there were as many marathons around, hence each one should have been faster. You really need to look at the overall yearly numbers and then look at population growth and compare.

Then again, who gives a crap.

Very kind of you to provide this--thanks.

Malmo how many miles did you run in this marathon build up? what was your weigh during your competitive days?

i don't necessarily agree with the 2 mill estimate, but no one's mentioned all of the people that come into NYC to support runners. that means you have to figure in all the family and friends staying in hotels that are not a part of the 8M population.

There were only about 17000 runners in that years race. Even if each runner brought 2 family members, that's not a lot of extra people.

There are a lot more marathons nowadays, so yes you are diluting the available pool quite a bit. What were the big races back then? Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston... Then again, how many more east Africans are in races nowadays?

I wonder if this was Lopes' first marathon? I know he got outkicked by DeCastella at Rotterdam the following spring, and of course he won the '84 Olympic marathon and later set the WR at Rotterdam in '85. Interesting that he DNF'd- was it really because he tripped? Also interesting is his planned DNF at Rotterdam '84. Apparently he ran the first 30k as a training run just to see if how fit he was, and after easily staying with the leaders he dropped out, confident that all was going as planned.