Byline: Tim Layden Staff writer
Twelve years ago, Jack Fultz was a graduate student at Georgetown and a Olympic hopeful in need of a qualifying time for the U.S. marathon trials.
Twice he had failed in attempts, so he would try again on the third Monday in April, at the Boston Marathon.
The requisite time to run to make the 1976 trials was 2 hours, 23 minutes and Fultz was certain his preparation was sufficient. 'I didn't question my ability to do it,' Fultz says now, remembering the day.
That year, Patriots' Day, the Massachusetts holiday on which the Boston Marathon is run each year (and on which the Red Sox play a morning game so as to allow their fans time to spill into Kenmore Square and watch the runners), felt like July. The temperature reached into the 90s, with direct sun and choking humidity.
Jack Fultz still rolled his mark: he ran 2:20:19, and qualified for the Olympic Trials.
He also won the race. First place. Laurel wreath, interviews, the works. 'It wasn't that much of a shock,' Fultz says. 'I knew I'd be in the top 10, no matter what.'
But except to the cognoscenti, he was a shock.
Fultz' victory on that oppressive afternoon in '76 - on the up slope of a curve that would lead to the peak of the running boom roughly five years hence - highlighted a profile of the Boston Marathon which can be traced through the last half-century.
Since 1942, the Boston Marathon has been won only 16 times by Americans, including only 10 of the last 25. The last four race winners (Toshihiko Seko of Japan, Rob deCastella of Australia and Geoff Smith of Great Britain, twice) have been foreign runners.
Of the 10 victories in the last quarter-century by Americans four were by the same runner: Bill Rodgers.
Foreign dominance (and conversely, American weakness) has always been most evident during Olympic years, when U.S. runners traditionally skip the Boston Marathon in order to rest for the trials, which traditionally take place within weeks of the third Monday in April.
Fultz' victory in '72 came in the absence of Shorter and Rodgers, who ran 1-2 at the Olympic Trials, and of Don Kardong, who ran third and finished fourth at the Montreal Olympics. Ambrose Burfoot, an American, won in '68 (in a time of 2:22:17, the slowest in the last 26 years), under similar circumstances.
Rodgers won in 1980, but in that year an American boycott of the Moscow Olympics was virtually assured and Rodgers also then possessed an allegiance to Boston.
More typical was 1984, when Geoff Smith ran 2:10:34 to beat a field virtually devoid of top U.S. marathoners.
And if '84 was typical, '88 stands to become the signature edition of the Boston Marathon as a foreign affair.
Monday's 92nd renewal of the most storied marathon in the world will serve as the Olympic Trials for Finland, Kenya and Tanzania. Great Britain, Japan, Italy and Djibouti will carefully assess performances from Boston in choosing their teams.
The United States, meanwhile, will run its trials just six days after the Boston Marathon, as part of the New Jersey Waterfront Marathon.
The trials will be televised by a major network (ABC); Boston will not.
The trials will be comprised entirely of American runners; the best open American at Boston is Darrick May of Balboa, Calif., a competent runner who is not expected to run near the front.
In simple terms, the delineation has never been clearer.
'The irony of the entire situation,' says Fultz, who now serves as the elite athletes' liason for Boston, 'is that we've probably got one of the strongest fields in Boston history. But not having Americans here hurts. It hurts any race, but particularly Boston, with the tradition of the race.'
Dan Schlesinger, an elite marathoner who would have been among the favorites in the trials until incurring a back injury three weeks ago, says, 'This way, instead of one quality race at the end of April, you're got two, with all of the best marathoners in the world.'
And clearly, the foreigners are in Boston and the Americans are in New Jersey.
More than two years ago, the men's long distance running committee of The Athletics Congress began the process of locating a site for the 1988 Olympic marathon trials. The '84 trials were run in Buffalo, in late May.
There would be two principal changes - in addition to the site - for '88: the date would be moved back to better accommodate runners preparing for the Olympics and the trials would be run in conjunction with a major (read: corporate-sponsored) marathon.
'There were two suggestions we received after the '84 trials,' says Kardong, chairman of the U.S. men's LDR committee and a fourth-place finisher in the '76 Olympic marathon. 'The strongest was that it was foolish to run the trials two months before the Olympics. The second was that we should put a good chunk of money on trials.'
The finalists were the New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh and New Jersey Waterfront marathons.
'We knew we were the dramatic underdog,' says Tim McLoone, director of the Jersey race. 'Boston and New York were more well-known and Pittsburgh, we had heard, was the favorite son of the LDR committee.'
McLoone, whose marathon functions, with outside sponsorship from private corporations, as an arm of the New Jersey State Athletic Commission, submitted a sealed bid which he says was $250,000. The money would go to TAC and the U.S. Olympic Committee.
He didn't expect to be awarded the trials, but he was.
There were problems with Boston and New York.
Boston possesses a strong international field, many of whom are paid six-figure, multi-year contracts by John Hancock Financial Services.
At the insistence of TAC, the U.S. Trials would be a U.S.-only race, which would have left Boston in a delicate - to say nothing of financially crippling - position with its contract athletes. 'If you held the trials in Boston,' Kardong says, 'you'd have many problems with the international field.'
New York is a fall marathon and would have to move to the spring in order to host the trials. 'I don't think their bid was serious,' Kardong said. 'They were basically a back-up bid.'
The money issue was a revolutionary one, at least in disclosure if not in reality. The Olympics haven't been a purely amateur competition in decades, not with Eastern bloc subsidization of teams and individuals and not with American corporate sponsorship of training centers and programs in more recent years.
However, the '88 Olympic marathon trials will be the first Olympic-related event to award prize money. The total is $150,000, with $50,000 to first place. The first three finishers make the U.S. Olympic team, but prize money goes 20 deep.
The New Jersey Waterfront Marathon delivered on each of the requisite counts. And on one other: 'We put into effect a plan, over several years, of catering to the American runners,' McLoone said. 'Some races said, 'We'll take care of the Americans.' We did it.'
And it worked.
'Our real goal,' Kardong says, 'is to provide a site which would showcase American runners.'
McLoone, a former high school and college runner whose first marathon was Boston, speaks generally with praise for the Boston Marathon. However, he says, 'the Boston Marathon is very important to the sport, but they tend to be very New England in their approach.'
On Thursday, the Ethiopian delegation, which would have been among the strongest at Boston, withdrew from the race in favor of the Rotterdam Marathon. Abebe Mekkonen, who won the Tokyo Marathon in 2:08:33, could cautiously have been called a favorite at Boston.
In his absence, ostensibly there is no favorite. There is depth. Britain has Geoff Smith and Steve Jones, Kenya has New York Marathon winner Ibrahim Hussein, Gabriel Kamau, Joseph Kipsang, Geoffrey Koech, Sulieman Nyambui and even Steve Kogo, who lived for two years in Albany and finished 10th recently in the Cherry Blossom 10-mile in Washington, D.C.
Italy has two former New York winners: Orlando Pizzolato and Gianni Poli, Mexico has 36-year-old Rodolfo Gomez, Finland has Tommy Ekblom. There are several quality Japanese runners, attempting to reach the upper echelon in their running-mad country.
'Clearly,' Kardong says, 'they have an incredibly strong international race. They aren't going to suffer much at all at the lack of Americans.'
Rodgers, who turned 40 this year, will be running his first Boston as a masters runner. 'And he's not the favorite in the masters at all,' Fultz says. Michael Hurd of Great Britain and Kjell Erik-Stahl of Sweden are both over 40 and have both broken 2:14.
Still, the possibility exists that Rodgers could be the first American finisher.
'That would be pretty funny,' Rodgers said Thursday in a press conference for the marathon, 'because I'm going to be a long ways back.'
Meanwhile, back in New Jersey ...
It has become de rigueur to bemoan the lack of quality marathoners in America and in many ways, justifiably so. While 2:09 is considered the gauge for a truly superb marathon, no American broke 2:11 in 1987. Not since Alberto Salazar, who held the world record in 1983, has America had a truly dominant marathoner.
The favorites in New Jersey - if favorites must be named - will be sorts like Pat Peterson and Pete Pfitzinger (who won the '84 trials by outkicking Salazar) and Bill Donakowski. They will be on national television and they will win money.
Boston, meanwhile, will run in relative quiet. Exceptional international quiet, but still quiet.
Except, as Jack Fultz can explain better than most, for the American who, inexplicably, comes to Boston - and comes to run well.
'For me,' Fultz says, 'it was a pleasant surprise. The people along the course didn't expect to see an American. They were waving flags, getting very excited. They made a lot of it.'
For it was a shock then and it will be a shock now.
