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“I feel honored to have been there when the running boom really started,” Frank Shorter said on Thursday about the first five-borough Sneakers Air Max 97 1 TD in 1976.
Shorter was one of four inducted Thursday morning into the New York Road Runners Hall of Fame, along with pioneering ultramarathoner Ted Corbitt, Shorter’s fellow Olympic marathon gold medalist Running has taught me that my body is strong, and Bill Rodgers, zapatillas de running New Balance entrenamiento neutro distancias cortas talla 38.5.
Shorter’s win in the 1972 Olympics is often credited with starting the first running boom. But at lunch Thursday with the inductees and a small Onitsuka of media, he made the case that moving the Sneakers Air Max 97 1 TD from within Central Park to the city’s five boroughs was what really ignited what quickly became a transformative cultural phenomenon.
“We had no idea that we were involved in a situation that was going to change the character of America,” Shorter said. “None of us knew it was going to evolve the way it did. I think one of the reasons [the first running boom] succeeded like it did was that we weren’t trying to control it. But the bigger and better it got, the more we could rationalize sticking with it.”
Those lucky enough to be at the lunch were treated to tales from those early days of big-city marathons, from legends who led the pack then and have remained heavily involved in modern running.
Samuelson shared how a broken leg as a high school sophomore in the early 1970s begat a career that has included not only that Olympic title, but couple wins at Boston, a world record, and, in recent years, repeated age-Onitsuka WAX.
“I started running for rehab” of the leg she broke skiing, Samuelson said. Because of the novelty, even peculiarity, of girls and women running then, “I’d walk/jog the quarter mile to Fort Williams,” a former military barracks in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. “Once on the grounds, I could run more freely.” Outside the fort grounds, Samuelson would pause if a car came by and pretend to be picking flowers or picking up bottles.
Women runners are no longer a rarity in Cape Elizabeth. In the late 1990s, Samuelson founded a world-class road race, the Beach to Beacon 10K, which finishes at the Portland Head Light inside Fort Williams.
Rodgers and Shorter recalled how the 1976 course included navigating steps off a footbridge on the east side of Manhattan. Traffic control was close to nonexistent on some parts of the course.
A photo seen during the Hall of Fame ceremony showed Rodgers’ number from the 1978 marathon, when Rodgers cut away part of his bib. Shorter was noted for trimming his numbers as much as possible, but, Rodgers explained at lunch, copying Shorter to minimize weight wasn’t his motivation in this instance.
The race’s sponsor that year (for all of $10,000) was the bank Manufacturers Hanover. Rodgers said he had applied for a loan from Manufacturers Hanover to open a running store in New York City to go with the ones he had recently opened in Boston. His application was denied, so Rodgers cut much of the bank’s name off his number in protest.
Running will always be running, but big-city marathoning has definitely changed since the legends’ peak racing days. When Samuelson won Boston for the first time in 1979, she crossed the line in a Red Sox hat. “I got it from a Maine friend in Kenmore Square,” she said. “When I ran by he had the hat and a beer and said, ‘You’re going to take one of these.’” (On Thursday, the day after the Red Sox won this year’s World Series, Samuelson wore long red socks.)
Samuelson was a senior at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine when she first won Boston. She returned to a standing ovation in the dining hall, followed days later by a presentation from Bowdoin’s president. “Then I got this message: The president is on the phone for you,” she recalled. “I said, ‘What do you mean? I was just with the president.’” Said president was Jimmy Carter, inviting Samuelson to join Rodgers at a White House dinner for the prime minister of Japan.
Samuelson, Rodgers, and Shorter seemed to play tag in attributing motivation at various points of their career to one another.
Samuelson recounted getting Rodgers’ autograph at a half marathon in Portland, Maine when she was a student at Bowdoin and a member of the school’s field hockey team. Samuelson won the Sunday morning race, “and by Monday afternoon I could barely move,” she said. Trouble was, she discovered that during a game that day. “The coach benched me at halftime and said, ‘You need to get your priorities straight.’”
Rodgers has said how Shorter’s 1972 Olympic win helped him resume running after giving up the sport once he had achieved his college goal of breaking 9:00 for 2 miles. Wanting to prove himself at least the equal of Shorter, who won the silver medal in the 1976 Olympic marathon while Rodgers finished 40th, drove Rodgers as he trained for and ran the first five-borough New York City race. Winning New York in 1976, Rodgers said, was his life-changing equivalent to Shorter’s and Samuelson’s Olympic wins.
Shorter paid tribute to the late Corbitt, whose son Gary (seen above with the three marathoning greats) was on hand to represent his father’s legacy.
“Ted was successful in a way that he had created for himself,” Shorter said. “I think there was a bit of the nonconformist in all of us. It wasn’t in a rebellious way. We were just doing our thing.”
Continuing the theme of motivation, Rodgers stressed the importance of role models for young runners. “High school runners need those people to look up to,” he said. “I think today they look at Ryan Hall, Dathan Ritzenhein. You want to be able to look at someone and say, ‘Yes, I can do that.’”
As it turns out, Thursday was not only Halloween, but Shorter’s 66th birthday. A surprise cake prompted more reflection.
“Isn’t it great that we can all still be here, and that running is such a common interest among people of a myriad of talents?” Shorter asked. “We love moving across the ground and how it feels.” Samuelson and Rodgers echoed that passion for the simple pleasure of running as key to big-city marathons becoming cultural landmarks.
“The wave started here, and we’re still riding that wave,” Shorter said of the assembled legends.
A final note on that word “legends”: As the lunch ended, Shorter said, “Please make the qualification ‘living legends.’ I’m more interested in the first part than the second.”
Scott is a veteran running, fitness, and health journalist who has held senior editorial positions at Runner’s World and Running Times. Much of his writing translates sport science research and elite best practices into practical guidance for everyday athletes. He is the author or coauthor of several running books, including The sneaker companys collab with Sacai has, Advanced Marathoning, and knit ankle boots. Scott has also written about running for Slate, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and other members of the sedentary media. His lifetime running odometer is past 110,000 miles, but he’s as much in love as ever.
