Bloomberg is nuts.
Marathon Presses On as Backlash Builds
By KEN BELSON
Amid intensifying criticism, New York Road Runners continued Thursday to prepare for the New York City Marathon with an abbreviated schedule of events leading to the race.
With the death count from Hurricane Sandy growing, hundreds of thousands still without power, and air, rail and ferry service struggling to resume, some runners and elected officials have called for Sunday’s marathon to be canceled or postponed. Police, fire and other essential public services, they said, should be focused on helping those most in need.
Nevertheless, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, aware that the marathon generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the city, repeated Thursday that the race would go on. He did not expect the Police Department to be overly burdened because the race is on a Sunday, when street traffic is limited. Many parts of the city, including Lower Manhattan, are expected to have their power back, freeing other workers.
“The city is a city where we have to go on,” Bloomberg said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
Mary Wittenberg, chief executive of New York Road Runners, which puts on the race, defended Bloomberg’s decision and said the race would be used as a platform to lift spirits and raise money. Her organization plans to donate $1 million, or $26.20 for every runner who starts the race, to relief efforts in the city. The Rudin Family and ING, two sponsors of the race, will donate a combined $1.6 million to storm relief. Road Runners is working to donate other supplies to relief efforts.
George Hirsch, the chairman of the board of Road Runners, acknowledged that running the marathon could be viewed as trivial and even a drain in light of the devastation in and around New York. But he expected the race to galvanize the city much as it did after the terrorist attacks in September 2001.
“I understand the controversy completely and respect all the views on this, but any decision that was made by the mayor would have been controversial and to call off the race would have been equally as controversial,” Hirsch said. “By Sunday afternoon, there won’t be any controversy. People will view it as an early step in the city’s recovery.”
New York’s marathon is the world’s largest, but this year the race will be noticeably smaller. Hirsch said he expected about 40,000 runners to begin the race, about 15 percent below what had initially been expected.
Wittenberg said that Road Runners had “essentially canceled” nearly everything on its calendar before the marathon, including a youth event Thursday, the opening ceremony in Central Park on Friday and the Dash to the Finish Line 5K on Saturday that would have run through Midtown.
With air and rail service only now starting to resume, many runners have yet to reach the city. Once they do, other accommodations will be needed. For now, the Staten Island Ferry transportation option to the start line is in doubt, and runners who hoped to get to the start line by ferry may need to take a bus instead. Typically, about half of the runners in the marathon take that route to get to the start line at the toll plaza to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge on Staten Island.
Runners will have until Saturday, instead of Wednesday, to withdraw from the race. They will be guaranteed a spot in next year’s race, but will not have this year’s entry fee refunded.
The marathon has escalated into political fodder, with elected officials issuing statements about the appropriateness of staging the race.
The likely Democratic candidates for mayor of New York offered their opinions. William C. Thompson said the race should be canceled because “our neighbors are hurting and our city needs to make them its priority.” John Liu, the comptroller, told Reuters that it should go on because “it’s a big economic generator.” Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, also supported the decision to hold the race, saying, “The event is a city institution that delivers tremendous economic activity.”
Some runners are torn about taking part. Simon Ressner, a lieutenant at the Fire Department, said that the police and fire departments and ambulance drivers are often needed unexpectedly in a disaster situation like this one. He noted that at least four police officers were at one gas station at Flatbush that he passed Thursday en route to evaluate the safety of some burned homes in Breezy Point, Queens. About 300 people had gathered to fill their gas cans, and the police officers were there to control the crowd.
“There’s a concrete example of why you need all the city resources available right now,” said Ressner, who added that he was 80 percent sure he would run Sunday. “I’ve written two e-mails to the Road Runners saying, ‘Just postpone it.’ That way, you’ll still get the money, you’ll still have a high-profile event, but it would show that you’re being sensitive. But now, we’re not going to show the world we’re resilient, we’re going to show them we’re selfish.”
First responders are not the only ones questioning the wisdom of holding the race. People on Staten Island are particularly angry that their borough is being used as a jumping-off point for the race while critical services for those stranded by the storm are not getting through.
Michelle Cleary, a singer-songwriter on Staten Island, started a Facebook group Wednesday calling for the marathon to be canceled. She came up with the idea because she and one of her two sisters did not have power, and her mother, a nurse in a burn unit, was upset by the devastation around them.
“Everyone was talking about whether they should have the marathon or not and I thought I should do something about it,” she said in a phone interview.
In less than 24 hours, more than 5,000 people had endorsed the site on Facebook.
A separate online petition calling for the race to be postponed had more than 1,100 signatures.
Cleary said that she worried about the potential toll the race could have on volunteers and city workers and would be in favor of postponing the marathon or diverting runners and volunteers to storm relief efforts. “I respect the Road Runners and I think they’re doing the best they can, but I don’t think they’re being fully realistic,” she said.
Juliet Macur, David Chen and Mary Pilon contributed reporting.
