New York City Mayor Bloomberg had planned all week to move forward with Sunday's marathon, but after receiving much criticism , finally decided to call things off.
Via: nypost.com
The show must go on, but maybe not all the time.
There's been a lot of controversy this week over New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's decision to move forward with the ING New York City Marathon this Sunday, culminating in the New York Post cover today depicting several generators currently resting in Central Park while hundreds of thousands in the city still remain without power.
At the race's start on Staten Island — the hardest-hit borough of New York City — Hurricane Sandy demolished homes and left almost 65% of the roughly 470,000 residents on the island without power. On Thursday morning, Staten Island Borough President Jim Molinaro was in in disbelief over Bloomberg's decision to run a marathon through his ravaged home.
"My God. What we have here is terrible, a disaster. If they want to race, let them race with themselves. This is no time for a parade. A marathon is a parade," he said in an announcement. Later that evening, host organization New York Road Runners (NYRR) CEO Mary Wittenberg went on NY1 news to announce that they plan to donate $2.62 million to Sandy relief from their funds as well as personal pledges.
But Bloomberg and NYRR still seem unfazed by the logistical challenges posed by Sandy's wrath — public transportation to the race's start on Staten Island will be difficult (runners who had signed up for "official transportation" to take the Staten Island Ferry to the start were reassigned to buses leaving from Midtown Manhattan), and the final six or so miles of the race are through Central Park, which remains closed.* Bloomberg seems to be running (pun intended) under the assumption that things will be, relatively speaking, back to normal by Sunday, with power scheduled to be restored to lower Manhattan today.
Both Bloomberg and Wittenberg seem to be banking on the emotional connection between disaster and triumph — the George W. Bush throwing out the first pitch at the World Series after September 11th–type moment. “The Marathon has always been a special day for New Yorkers as a symbol of the vitality and resiliency of this city,” said Wittenberg in a statement.
"I was all set for running the marathon until yesterday, when I went to Coney Island — I had no idea it was quite so bad," Kai MacMahon, a conflicted runner, told me. "And the thought of there being search parties less than a mile from the actual start line...I don’t know what I’m going to do."
Pictures of the destruction on Staten Island.
Source: s3-ak.buzzfed.com
New York Times sports writer Lynn Zinser is aghast at the thought of police officers or resources being diverted to the marathon, especially after Bloomberg was quick to cancel the Nets vs. Knicks opener at the Barclays Center scheduled for Thursday night. "For some reason, the uplifting value of the New York City Marathon, however, is so off the charts in Bloomberg World that nothing trumps diverting countless police and sanitation resources to marathon duty, even when parts of the metropolitan area lie in ruins and the city is mired in transportation hell," she writes.
Bloomberg, however, said in a press conference Wednesday that none of the city's resources would be taken away to be put toward the marathon, and that much of the organizational efforts are through private companies hired by NYRR. Still, it's hard to justify when help is needed elsewhere.
"You cannot spare a policeman, you cannot spare a first responder to stand on a street corner to police the marathon," WFAN sports talk radio host Mike Francesa said Thursday, and ESPN analyst Darren Rovell tweeted: