bobguild76 wrote:For the vast majority of runners, it will be sad to not have the race. But, for the elite men & women, the impact is greater....
You have it backwards. The elites did not have to pay hundreds of dollars to enter the race, more to rent their own hotel rooms, more to reach NYC. They did not have to take time off work for a long weekend. They likely did not train for the better part of a year with this one event as their singular focus. And they probably already have offers (or agents seeking offers) for all-expenses-paid trips to other races in the coming weeks. For the elites this is an inconvenience at the worst. The vast majority of runners are actually really screwed and it will impact them in very real ways.
bobguild76 wrote:For the vast majority of runners, it will be sad to not have the race. But, for the elite men & women, the impact is greater....
You have it backwards. The elites did not have to pay hundreds of dollars to enter the race, more to rent their own hotel rooms, more to reach NYC. They did not have to take time off work for a long weekend. They likely did not train for the better part of a year with this one event as their singular focus. And they probably already have offers (or agents seeking offers) for all-expenses-paid trips to other races in the coming weeks. For the elites this is an inconvenience at the worst. The vast majority of runners are actually really screwed and it will impact them in very real ways.
I do not know if you are being facetious or not, but the elites get very few paydays and this was one of them. How about if you did not get paid for the next half of the year?
ExCoastRanger wrote:They likely did not train for the better part of a year with this one event as their singular focus. And they probably already have offers (or agents seeking offers) for all-expenses-paid trips to other races in the coming weeks. For the elites this is an inconvenience at the worst.
You don't seem to have a grasp on what world-class marathoning involves these days.
Last edited by jazzcyclist on Fri Nov 02, 2012 7:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Wittenberg and Bloomberg did no one any favors as they stubbornly sharpened their Nero impressions all week...
I have tremendous sympathy for the runners, elite and average. If it were me here's what I would do as NYRR president(forgetting for the moment I would have postponed/cancelled on Wednesday...)
1. Refund all entry fees for this year. A no-brainer.
2. Offer FREE entry to next year's race for anyone who made the trip to NY for this year's event. It probably won't offset all the expenses incurred, but would be a reasonable goodwill gesture.
3. Use the buses chartered to transport runners/belongings Sunday to take any runners/volunteers who wish to utilize Sunday as a day of service to Staten Island, Brooklyn, New Jersey, or any of the hard hit and still-recovering areas of the region.
bobguild76 wrote:For the vast majority of runners, it will be sad to not have the race. But, for the elite men & women, the impact is greater....
You have it backwards. The elites did not have to pay hundreds of dollars to enter the race, more to rent their own hotel rooms, more to reach NYC. They did not have to take time off work for a long weekend. They likely did not train for the better part of a year with this one event as their singular focus. And they probably already have offers (or agents seeking offers) for all-expenses-paid trips to other races in the coming weeks. For the elites this is an inconvenience at the worst. The vast majority of runners are actually really screwed and it will impact them in very real ways.
It's a glorified vacation for most of the field. It's still a vacation for them.
jazzcyclist wrote:.... I see it differently since all the runners from all over the world and the local businessmen would have still been shit out of luck. If insurance will cover their bottom line, greed can't possibly be their motivating factor for going ahead with the race....
Partially greed, and largely (IMHO) the swagger factor. Bloomberg in a pissing match with the rest of the world (even if the rest of the world isn't playing) to show that New Yorkers are the toughest and can stand up in any kind of adversity.
I felt he was trying to Giuliani the Marathon in an attempt to make it seem as if everything was ok. It's not ok yet. It will be. But it isn't now.
NFL games and NBA games can be different. Those are held in one spot and, for all intents and purposes, can be played in an empty stadium if need be.
The NYC Marathon, in addition to being a competitive event for some, is always presented in a "celebratory" fashion which would have seemed ridiculous at this juncture. The race was appropriately cancelled. I'm from NY, have run in many NYC marathons and still have friends and family without some basic necessities. Running the race would have been absurd.
26mi235 wrote: I do not know if you are being facetious or not, but the elites get very few paydays and this was one of them. How about if you did not get paid for the next half of the year?
Do they not get paid at all? In other words, do the contracts they sign give the event organizer the option to arbitrarily cancel the event?
guru wrote:I have tremendous sympathy for the runners, elite and average.
Yes, and according to the official statement, running the event would not even have diverted resources from rescue efforts. The statement makes it clear that the event was cancelled just for political reasons.
guru wrote:I have tremendous sympathy for the runners, elite and average.
Yes, and according to the official statement, running the event would not even have diverted resources from rescue efforts.
In the public's mind, that claim was effectly debunked by the front page of Friday's New York Post, which showed two generators under the headline "ABUSE OF POWER".
As I understand it, those generators were going to power the press tent, when (according to the Post) they could have been powering apartment houses in which people have been living without heat, hot water, lights, or elevator service.
The Post cover itself intensified the public sentiment against holding the marathon.
Anger toward the mayor and marathon officials mounted throughout Friday after a New York Post cover depicted two massive generators devoted to powering the press tent in Manhattan, while many citizens on Staten Island and the outer reaches of Queens remained in the dark.
The most difficult thing about holding the race would have been the start which takes place in Staten Island. The visual of runners running past all that carnage would not have looked good on TV.
tandfman wrote:The Post cover itself intensified the public sentiment against holding the marathon.
Just seems to me the media is looking for scapegoats there. Those power outages are the local utilities company's fault for not taking care of their infrastructure; they are not the marathoner's fault.
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if you really want do do a marathon november 18, while it's not new york it is 26.2
tandfman wrote:The Post cover itself intensified the public sentiment against holding the marathon.
Just seems to me the media is looking for scapegoats there. Those power outages are the local utilities company's fault for not taking care of their infrastructure; they are not the marathoner's fault.
You've got to be kidding.
It's real simple. There are still plenty of residents of the area without power, homes, food, gas and assorted other facets of the basic necessities of living in a normal fashion yet some believe that there is any relative importance to running a race which, when it gets down to the core is basically all about feeling good about ourselves?
Some of these nitwits I read about and see whining and crying about not being able to run a race really need an education in perspective.
jazzcyclist wrote:The most difficult thing about holding the race would have been the start which takes place in Staten Island. The visual of runners running past all that carnage would not have looked good on TV.
The runners would not have run past the carnage. The race starts at the foot of the bridge. When it's not filled with runners, it's just a huge toll plaza. That's not where the carnage was, and so if the carnage were visible to the tv audience at all, it would only be because some director inserted video clips of something that happened, or was happening, elsewhere on Staten Island.
Actor Anson Mount walking the walk. After railing against the marathon before it's cancellation, working today with relief efforts on Staten Island. Anyone planning to help can get a pretty good idea what's needed by following his twitter feed.
ExCoastRanger wrote:They likely did not train for the better part of a year with this one event as their singular focus. And they probably already have offers (or agents seeking offers) for all-expenses-paid trips to other races in the coming weeks. For the elites this is an inconvenience at the worst.
You don't seem to have a grasp on what world-class marathoning involves these days.
Actually I think I have a pretty good grasp -- for a fan -- of how things work at the pro level. I sympathize with their situation. And 26mi's point about a missed payday is taken. But these are Olympic medal winners and world-list leaders we're talking about here. They will find another payday.
What I have a really good grasp on is what it's like to try to balance more than full-time work and family, train your ass off, try to eke out of a rigid schedule a few irrevocable and unpaid days off, and try to budget for the event and the travel to and from event. Maybe, as somebody else said, it is a glorified vacation for many, but it may be the only one some of those folks get or can afford for the whole year. And for something like the NYC Marathon, they could be missing a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It's hard to get all those stars aligned and ducks in a row.
26mi235 wrote: I do not know if you are being facetious or not, but the elites get very few paydays and this was one of them. How about if you did not get paid for the next half of the year?
Do they not get paid at all? In other words, do the contracts they sign give the event organizer the option to arbitrarily cancel the event?
Read Jazz's comment above. Much of their earnings come directly from the few big races, not from sponsorship dollars. Also, if they are not running this race, then they have less to pin their base to for sponsorship dollars.
26mi235 wrote:Read Jazz's comment above. Much of their earnings come directly from the few big races, not from sponsorship dollars. Also, if they are not running this race, then they have less to pin their base to for sponsorship dollars.
Yeah, I agree with you that this is a big issue for the elite runners.
I was just wondering if they have some legal claim against NYRR (or whoever the event organizer is). I assume there's a contract between NYRR and elite runners that establishes in which scenarios NYRR doesn't have to pay them, and I was just curious whether it's obvious that the current scenario is covered by that.
ExCoastRanger wrote:What I have a really good grasp on is what it's like to try to balance more than full-time work and family, train your ass off, try to eke out of a rigid schedule a few irrevocable and unpaid days off, and try to budget for the event and the travel to and from event. Maybe, as somebody else said, it is a glorified vacation for many, but it may be the only one some of those folks get or can afford for the whole year. And for something like the NYC Marathon, they could be missing a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It's hard to get all those stars aligned and ducks in a row.
I agree with all of this. It is a big loss and disappointment for the serious amateurs, but that's no reason to trivialize the loss for the pros. FYI, in their heyday, runners of the caliber of Paula Radcliffe and Haile Gebreselassie were reportedly getting appearance fees in the $300,000 -$500,000 range. That's serious money for a distance runner. You can't make that working at McDonald's
This NYT article suggests it's hard for the elites to find a "replacement" race, because the elite fields for upcoming marathons in November and December are already set, and the organizers do not have the extra money to invite additional runners.
26mi235 wrote:Read Jazz's comment above. Much of their earnings come directly from the few big races, not from sponsorship dollars. Also, if they are not running this race, then they have less to pin their base to for sponsorship dollars.
Yeah, I agree with you that this is a big issue for the elite runners.
I was just wondering if they have some legal claim against NYRR (or whoever the event organizer is). I assume there's a contract between NYRR and elite runners that establishes in which scenarios NYRR doesn't have to pay them, and I was just curious whether it's obvious that the current scenario is covered by that.
NYRR is a very big operation, not some small-scale race promoter. They are in a very litigious area. I think that their attorneys probably have reasonable elements in contracts with the elite runners.
Why are people speculating so widely (and wildly) with very little knowledge of the full situation. Just sit back and see what happens, it is not like you have to get a jump on knowing what might occur.
tandfman wrote:The Post cover itself intensified the public sentiment against holding the marathon.
Just seems to me the media is looking for scapegoats there. Those power outages are the local utilities company's fault for not taking care of their infrastructure; they are not the marathoner's fault.
You're joking, right? This was a hurricane with 90 MPH winds that created a 7 to 15 foot storm surge that hit at high tide during a full moon. There's not a power system anywhere that is designed to handle something like that.
No, it isn't the fault of marathon runners, but neither is it the fault of the hundreds of thousands of people who are without electricity or heat (and it was in the 30s this morning), and the thousands of people whose homes have been destroyed.
The way the marathon was cancelled was stupidly handled. It should have happened several days earlier when it was clear just how devastating the storm had been, which would have saved everyone a lot of problems. But cancelling the marathon was not stupid, and was the only right thing to do.
Of course, the NYRR botched even the aftermath of the marathon cancellation by shipping their generators back to the warehouse, rather than out to somewhere where they are desperately needed (for example, the 12 story 240 unit apartment building in Rockaway I was delivering supplies to yesterday, which is primarily occupied by senior citizens and has had no power, heat, or hot water since Monday), and then sending out a release to the runners that blamed the cancellation on the media. It is astounding just how utterly clueless Wittenberg and the NYRR people have been during this whole fiasco.
Al in NYC wrote:You're joking, right? This was a hurricane with 90 MPH winds that created a 7 to 15 foot storm surge that hit at high tide during a full moon. There's not a power system anywhere that is designed to handle something like that.
I wasn't talking about power outages for a couple days that can of course be expected following such a storm. I'm not in NYC, but from the media coverage it seems those outages are expected to last for weeks. And with respect to that, I would put significant blame on Con Ed (or whatever the utilties company is).
And if Con Ed doesn't manage to turn power back on within a week, then I'd consider it their responsibility to find backup generators. So when a newspaper blames a lack of electricity one week after the hurricane on someone else, then yeah, they're just looking for scapegoats.
Al in NYC wrote: It is astounding just how utterly clueless Wittenberg and the NYRR people have been during this whole fiasco.
Phil Hersh gets it right.
It took far too long for Bloomberg and Mary Wittenberg, chief executive of the race organizers, to understand that the wrong-headed decision to go ahead with the event was an obscene gesture and slap in the face at Staten Islanders – and all other New Yorkers whose lives have been turned upside down by the storm.
By her failure to realize that, Wittenberg had become Witlessberg, no matter that she had the mayor’s irrational and inexplicable imprimatur to proceed.
Less than 48 hours before the race, the list of politicians calling for it to be canceled was growing. Online petitions were ballooning and protests were being planned. Reports circulated that volunteers setting up equipment had been pelted with eggs.
Al in NYC wrote:You're joking, right? This was a hurricane with 90 MPH winds that created a 7 to 15 foot storm surge that hit at high tide during a full moon. There's not a power system anywhere that is designed to handle something like that.
I wasn't talking about power outages for a couple days that can of course be expected following such a storm. I'm not in NYC, but from the media coverage it seems those outages are expected to last for weeks. And with respect to that, I would put significant blame on Con Ed (or whatever the utilties company is).
And if Con Ed doesn't manage to turn power back on within a week, then I'd consider it their responsibility to find backup generators. So when a newspaper blames a lack of electricity one week after the hurricane on someone else, then yeah, they're just looking for scapegoats.
I would kindly suggest that your comments show that you don't really have any concept of the scale of the damage or the problems the storm caused here.
jazzcyclist wrote:Pelting the volunteers with eggs? That's pretty pathetic IMO.
If it actually happened, which is dubious when the source is "reports circulated"
That makes me less sympathetic to storm victims.
Even if it did happen, you think it was storm victims that were doing the pelting? My guess is any storm victims that had access to eggs would eat them, on the spot.
j-a-m wrote:I wasn't talking about power outages for a couple days that can of course be expected following such a storm. I'm not in NYC, but from the media coverage it seems those outages are expected to last for weeks. And with respect to that, I would put significant blame on Con Ed (or whatever the utilties company is).
And if Con Ed doesn't manage to turn power back on within a week, then I'd consider it their responsibility to find backup generators. So when a newspaper blames a lack of electricity one week after the hurricane on someone else, then yeah, they're just looking for scapegoats.
As someone who lives in an area that is regularly hit with hurricanes, you obviously don't have a clue about the monumental challenges that power companies must deal with after a storm of this magnitude, EVEN when they're fully prepared for the storm. Before Hurricane Gustav hit, the parking lots of the local hotels and motels were full of utility trucks from all over the country, driven by thousands of utility workers ready to go to work after the storm passed, but it still took weeks for for many people to get power back. As a matter of fact, it took weeks before some roads were even passible due to all the trees that had to be clear out of the way.
guru wrote:Even if it did happen, you think it was storm victims that were doing the pelting? My guess is any storm victims that had access to eggs would eat them, on the spot.
Are you being funny or do you really believe it's plausible that folks from areas unaffected by the storm traveled to the storm affected areas just to throw eggs at race volunteers?
