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Will Chicago Marathon Help Or Hurt Olympic Bid?
Questions Still Being Asked By Participants
Jay Levine - Reporting
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Will
Chicago Marathon Help Or Hurt Olympic Bid?
(CBS) CHICAGO One day after the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon came to an abrupt
and chaotic end due to intense heat, some are wondering if the problems on the race
course will hurt Chicago's Olympic bid.
The executive director of the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon is taking a lot of heat
Monday night for the heat and the decisions he made, or failed to make. As the race
unfolded, pictures were transmitted worldwide showing runners collapsed on the course
and ambulances lined up all over town. The events topped Matt Drudge's super-site,
The Drudge Report on Sunday, making the event an international story.
Then came the runners' complaints of a lack of water and Gatorade at the aid stations.
As CBS 2's chief correspondent Jay Levine reports, it comes down to three critical
questions.
Question #1: Should they have started the race at all?
“At 7:45 in the morning, it was 71 degrees," said marathon director Carey Pinkowski.
"It was a low heat index. It almost appeared we got a little bit of a break."
But with the temperature, humidity and heat index rising quickly, the sound of pounding
feet and cheering crowds was replaced by the wail of sirens.
All the questions about how Chicago handled handled the heat-stricken marathon came
just days after a warning from U.S. Olympic Committee President Peter Ueberroth.
"We're going to have to show the world we can put on a world class event, welcome
over a hundred countries here, we haven't done that," Ueberroth said speaking
about the upcoming world boxing championships. But the marathon draws a huge international
field too, so his warning about world class athletes being critical to Chicago's
Olympic hopes could apply to the marathon too.
More than 300 runners were transported by ambulance; more than a hundred admitted
to hospitals. Tens of thousands were not.
Some of them are asking Question #2: Why stop the race?
“There’s people out there today, grumpy,” said three-time Olympian Jim Spivey. “I
wanted to finish that race, but I think for health reasons, for the city of Chicago
- it was the right decision. And it’s also not unprecedented because Rotterdam this
year, they cancelled their marathon as well. They were running it and halfway through,
they stopped it.”
One runner said the race was out of Gatorade and water. He said the situation was
unbelievable and asked “how do they expect us to finish 26 miles?”
Question 3: Were they prepared?
Most complaints came from those well back in the pack. Runner Tracie Bain noticed
a shortage after mile nine.
“They were just telling us to move on because there wasn't any water,” Bain said.
“People were very aggravated and almost fighting over water at times.”
Did organizers fail to realize how much they'd need? They had nearly 2 million cups
of water on hand, but as one runner said, “you had people come up taking four or
five glasses of water and dousing themselves to cool themselves off, and then drinking
two or three.”
“That's something we haven't seen in any of the history of the 17 years that I've
done this,” said Pinkowski.
Even though this story is being reported worldwide, and may not be the best thing
for the city's image, few feel it'll have much impact on Chicago's chances for the
summer Olympics -- where a much smaller group of much higher caliber athletes, will
present a very different challenge.
"You can't predict what the weather's going to be, and so you just have to think
ahead, plan ahead, be prepared as best you can. Sure, it's a bump in the road, but
we can address it. We're many years from the actual event," U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin
(D-Illinois) said about the marathon.
If Chicago wins the bid for the 2016 summer games, an Olympic marathon would take
place in mid-summer heat, but world-class athletes would be participating like those
who finished yesterday's race without experiencing problems.
A spokesman for Chicago 2016 called the marathon "unique and unfortunate,"
but said it shouldn't reflect on Chicago's ability to handle an "Olympic games
marathon with fewer than 200 elite athletes, a very different event than yesterday's
race of nearly 40,000 runners."
Marathon organizers said they believe the way Chicago handled the heat emergency
would be anything but a black eye for Chicago.
"I think this is a great example. I mean we were put in an adverse situation
and all the agencies we've been working with responded well. They all stepped up
in a grand way," executive race director Carey Pinkowski said.
Comparing how Chicago handled the marathon to the city's ability to handle the Olympics
might be comparing apples and oranges. It could very well be that the elite athletes
who competed and finished early will take back glowing tales to their national Olympic
committees, which could help, rather than hurt the bid.
Send your response here
Will
Chicago Marathon Help Or Hurt Olympic Bid?
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