Mary Wittenberg, director of the New York City Marathon,
arrived at the event’s exposition at the Jacob K. Javits Center on
Thursday with a message for people clamoring for the cancellation of the
race.
“This isn’t about running,” she said. “This is about helping the city.”
A
day later, though, Wittenberg came to a painful realization: many in
the city — and many of the runners from around the world who paid and
trained for the race — did not see the marathon as help, but rather as
an insensitive romp through the city’s streets at a time when millions
are suffering the consequences of a natural disaster. Her marquee event,
the one that generates soaring revenue and good will for the New York
Road Runners club she runs, was suddenly a source of derision.
So
not long after joining city officials on Friday in announcing the
decision to cancel the marathon for the first time in its history,
Wittenberg, a former high school cheerleader known for her unyielding
pep, walked through Central Park not far from where the race’s finish
line would have been. She looked pale, tired and shaken, on the verge of
tears.
“It’s crushing and really difficult,” she said in a quiet voice. “One of the toughest decisions we ever made.”
Wittenberg,
a former elite marathoner who took over as chief executive of Road
Runners in 2005, has come to believe in the virtues of the sport and her
club, that running can lift the depressed and galvanize a city. She
witnessed it in New York in 2001, when, only two months after the
terrorist attacks of September 11, the marathon was staged in patriotic
splendor.
This week offered something altogether different.
“It
was a stupendously bad decision to hold this race, and the fact that
they pulled the plug at the last minute only hurts the very people they
tried to help in the first place,” said Alan Vinegrad, a former U.S.
Attorney who has run six marathons, including New York City twice. “The
only justification they had to run this race, if there was ever a
justification, was to avoid the expense and inconvenience of all the
out-of-towners who traveled to New York for the marathon. Now they are
the people that are left out to dry because they are in the city
already.”
Those people will most likely blame both Wittenberg and the city for that.
Wittenberg, 50, is the de facto boss of running in the United States
and an ambassador for the sport worldwide. Under her leadership, Road
Runners’ revenue has grown to $59.3 million in the 2012 fiscal year,
more than double the $28.4 million it earned the year she took over. But
even from her position atop the sport, she still must answer to the
mayor in New York City.
“The
hope is the marathon goes on,” she said Wednesday, adding, “The mayor
will make the right decision, and the decision is in his hands.”
It
was the second time in just over two months that Wittenberg’s
organization and the city were responsible for a wildly unpopular
decision.
She
took the brunt of the criticism when Road Runners said in late August
that the group would no longer transport runners’ belongings from the
start on Staten Island to the finish area in Central Park. She said the
city had long wanted Road Runners to alleviate the congestion beyond the
marathon’s finish line, caused partly by trucks that transported
runners’ bags.
Some
runners at a race in Harlem booed her for eliminating the bag drop.
Online, a petition against the decision gained momentum.
