All language subtitles for Free to Run 2016 (Free to Run 2016) (ENGLISH)

Yeah, I remember running
back here in late 1960s.

I could do a full loop six
miles around Central Park

and I might see four or
five other runners back then.

That was it in the
course of a an hour run.

And I would say I knew
every one of them back then.

And if I didn't know
them by name, I

certainly recognized
them, said hello to them.

There weren't many of us and
we were considered pretty odd.

Yeah, kind of weirdos, I
would say, at that time.

Sure changed now.

Runners used to be
an eccentric minority.

You know, nobody
really took us seriously.

I used to go out at
night because I was

embarrassed about being
seen in public running.

On voyait arriver en
face des phares, on se

jetait dans le fossé,
on restait attendre.

Il est passé, puis on
ressortait, puis on courait.

Et on passait pour des
fous, des farfelus complets.

I think we were
looked as oddballs.

We were strangers to people, seeing people
running down the block in their underwear,

I guess, you know,
in white shorts.

I once got stopped by the police while I
was out running without a shirt in a park

because they thought I
was a pervert of some kind.

What's so attractive
about running?

It is so earthy.

That's a little exaggerated, but it's
something you do all on your own.

You create your run.

Nobody helps you.

Nobody hinders you and
you are just out there in the

environment, wherever it may
be and it's just you and the world.

When you run you get this pattern of
beautiful forms and colors, the leaves and

the forest and the blue sky and you're
breathing the air and you just feel alive

on this earth and to me
it was always a miracle.

In the spring when you're in the park and
you can smell the grass growing and the

buzz, in the summer, I
mean, there's nothing like

running and sweating
and having a beer after it.

I have a friend who was
always a friend of mine.

It's always bullshit
about endomorphins.

And it's true that there's a moment
when you say to yourself, let's go,

you're a little tired, etc.

And then you get into the rhythm and
all of a sudden there's the well-being and

this kind of moment
when the body is a bit like

a machine and then
the head can free itself.

It's at this moment that you can
start to think and it's true, in a way,

to get a little
closer to the sky.

Running was a way
of self-expression.

It was very simple.

You needed no equipment.

We ran not naked
but close to it.

And so it was our equivalent
of going to Woodstock and

listening to music and
doing something quite natural.

And some people expressed
themselves through music

and some people expressed
themselves through drugs.

I expressed myself
through running.

One Sunday, a friend of mine said,
you know, did you ever run a marathon?

I had never run more
than a mile or two miles.

And he said, let's go down to McCombs Dam
Park in the Bronx and they have a marathon

called Cherry Tree
Marathon and we'll run it.

In the mid-1960s, anyone who went running
outside the stadium was frowned upon

unless they were a
well-known athlete.

A city as big as New York could only bring
together a small group of running freaks

who met up every Sunday to run a
marathon through the streets of the Bronx,

the city's roughest area.

I started around Yankee
Stadium, around and around.

And I said, oh, this is easy.

This is a jog.

This is easy.

You know, anybody can do this.

So I kept going around.

It was cold.

It was freezing cold.

And so I went around,
around five miles, ten miles.

I got up about 15 miles.

And boom, I just
couldn't take another step.

And I stopped in front of
a church up in the Bronx.

And all the people were
coming out of the church.

And one fellow saw me.

I swear this is true.

He saw me and I
was just frozen up.

And I was blue because it was, you
know, in the middle of the wintertime.

He took off his coat.

Then he took off his
shirt that he gave me.

He wrapped his shirt around
me and he said, you can do it.

Keep going.

Keep going.

And I kept going.

Well, I went another mile.

I just, oh, well, I
couldn't walk for a week.

It's a lot of fun to run.

But if you're going to hasten
your death, that's no fun.

Running is the worst thing in
the world you can do because

you're taking a chance to
shorten your life by 20 to 40 years.

So in those days you
were seen as some kind of

masochistic weirdo if
you went road running.

The situation was
even worse for women.

They were not even allowed to take
part in distance races of over 800 meters.

And things had been
that way for a long time.

That 1928 women's 800 meters
was amazing from many points of view.

One was that the women
in reality ran so well.

The other aspect of it is that it was
misreported, probably with a degree of

deliberate manipulation by the Olympic
Association, that they all collapsed.

And it told, at the time, there were
11 women in the race, five didn't finish,

five collapsed at the finish.

What actually happened was that one
woman, as she crossed the finish line,

leant forward and fell over.

Just as runners very often
do at the finish of races.

The film footage focuses on that and
makes it look as if there is devastation.

That was taken as the truth.

Doctors all around the world said women
will harm themselves, they shouldn't be

doing this, they carry too
much fat, they're too emotional.

And the 800 meters was cut
from the Olympic Games until 1960.

So from 1928 to 1960,
women had nothing in the

Olympic Games longer
than for a while at 100 meters.

When my baby goes out
My dunces are about My

baby comes home to me
It was a whole mindset.

The mindset of the 50s and 60s that I
grew up in is that women weren't capable of

doing it, they weren't
capable of going to medical

school, they couldn't have
a credit card on their own.

People whispered about, you know,
if you ran, you're going to get big legs,

and you're going to grow hair on your
chest, you're going to turn into a man,

you're going to turn into
maybe something else, you're

never going to get
married, never have children.

I was a nurse.

And the tradition
was, the saying was, if

you ran too much, your
uterus would fall out.

Women's sports were a problem.

Obviously, we had
conferences about it.

It can be, at the same time,
very beneficial and very harmful.

In fact, they did gymnastics.

Gymnasts are beautiful, skaters
are beautiful, but not the runners.

It's really very bad to see a woman who
is not talented enough to run on a track.

It's not good.

It has to be very good.

I didn't understand that at all, because
I felt fabulous whenever I was running.

So I refused to
believe these myths.

And I decided to play sports, be
feminine, and be anything I wanted to be.

Back then, Catherine
Switzer had no idea

running would play
such a big part in her life.

She was just a typical
American teenager.

When her father first suggested to her
that running would help her get into shape

and boost her chances of getting
on to the school's field hockey team.

He said, all you have
to do is go and run a mile

a day, and you'd be the
best player on that team.

And I said, what?

A mile a day, Dad?

You know, it's like
climbing up Kilimanjaro.

I began running this mile every single
day, and the most amazing thing happened.

Every day I ran, I
felt so empowered.

I felt fearless, like I
could do anything.

I could conquer the world.

When Switzer went to college a few
years later in 1965, she soon realized that

there was no provision for
women who wanted to run.

Nonetheless, she hunted down the track
coach and asked to join the men's team.

It was really funny to see his face,
because he kind of went like this,

and he said, um, well, um,
I've been the coach here

for 30 years, and we've
never had a girl before.

But I have to tell you, it is against NCAA
rules to let you run on the men's team.

The NCAA was the
federation that ruled over

college athletics in the
USA with an iron fist.

But Switzer didn't
care about that.

Through sheer persistence, she managed to
get accepted onto the college track team.

But they asked her to train alone
with an elderly coach, Arnie Briggs.

Arnie Briggs was a mailman, and
he delivered the mail in Syracuse,

New York, and then he
worked out every afternoon.

And he did this for one day in his
life that was extremely special to him.

And that was a day in April
that he ran the Boston Marathon.

And he had run the
Boston Marathon 15 times,

and he would tell
me a story every day.

And every day would be another
story about the Boston Marathon.

The 53rd annual Boston
Marathon will take place tomorrow.

Over 200 people will run the
26.2 miles of this unique marathon.

Katherine Switzer had heard so
much about the Boston Marathon

that she ended up asking
her coach if she could run it.

Briggs flatly refused.

And I said, Arnie, look, regardless of
what you believe or you don't believe,

I'm not running with you anymore until
you believe that a woman, some woman,

can run the marathon distance.

And he says, like this, he said, if any
woman can do it, I believe you can do it.

But you would have
to prove it to me.

In fact, if you showed me in practice, I'd
be the first person to take you to Boston.

So Katherine started training
daily, gradually increasing her

training time and distance
until she could run the marathon.

She ran a full 26.4 miles of
a marathon without a break.

One year earlier, another
girl living thousands

of kilometers away had
exactly the same idea.

And I wrote for my application blank
and I got a letter back from Will Cloney,

who is the race director,
and it said, women

are not physiologically
able to run 26 miles.

And furthermore, under the rules of
the amateur athletic union, they're not

allowed to run more than a
mile and a half competitively.

But I convinced my mother
to drive me to the start.

At first she thought I was
nuts, so I said, Mom, it's

not just for me, it's for
all women, don't you see?

You know, this is a
little chink in the armor.

This is an opportunity
to change things.

Running without an official race
number, Bobbie Gibb chose to

blend in discreetly with the
pack, and she kept a low profile.

The following year in 1967, the situation
was very different for Katherine Switzer.

I signed my name K.V.

Switzer.

That's something I started
doing when I was in high school

because my name was
misspelled on my birth certificate.

And when the entry went
in with Arnie's and other

team members, they
thought it was from a guy.

When we got to Boston,
it was snowing and

sleeting all the way into
Boston the night before.

And the morning of the race,
it was really coming down.

So as we all moved to the start line
together, you know, there I was in a baggy

gray sweatsuit looking like
hundreds of other people.

Wearing her official race
bib, Katherine Switzer ran

between Arnie, her coach,
and her boyfriend, Tom.

Then we got to about
the two-mile mark in

the race, and a very
strange thing happened.

The press truck came by us.

There happened to be three runners
running alongside one, one, one, one.

And the middle of the three runners,
the middle one, took the hood off,

off her head, off the head, and
we, and it said, it was a woman!

On this bus were the two
race directors, a guy by the

name of Will Cloney and a
guy by the name of Jock Semple.

And one of the riders said, Jock,
there's a woman in your race.

Jock looked, stop
the bus, stop the bus.

I heard behind me
shoes, leather shoes.

It sounded, you know, scraping,
and they were going fast.

And all of a sudden I turned, like you
turn like when you hear a dog chasing you,

at the last minute, and Jock
Semple grabbed me like this.

He grabbed me by the
shirt and threw me back.

And he screamed, get the
hell out of my race and give me

those numbers, and went to
try to pull off my bib number.

And I pulled back like that.

All of a sudden, Tom, he
threw a shoulder block into Jock

Semple, and I thought that I
saw Jock go through the air.

For a split second, I thought,
should I, should I step off the course?

And the journalists were
asking these very aggressive

questions like, what
are you trying to prove?

You know, are you a suffragette?

Are you a crusader?

And, you know, I'm thinking,
I just want to run here.

What is this all about?

Despite everything, Katherine
Switzer managed to complete the 26.

4 miles and finish the race.

But a few days later, she received a
letter from the organizers of the Boston

Marathon telling her that she
had been disqualified and banned

for life from the AAU, the
American Athletics Federation.

That was my first big
brush with discrimination.

And it opened my eyes a lot.

And I thought, you know, you've
always been taught to be responsible,

to finish what you start.

And it's going to be my responsibility
now to try to give other women this

opportunity, to tell them how
wonderful this running can be.

And I didn't know how I was going to
do it, but when I crossed the finish line,

I knew that that
was a life plan.

You can be somebody's wife, you can be
somebody's mother, you can be somebody's

lover, you can be somebody's
anything, but you can't be somebody.

Yesterday Any way you made it was
true Women, black people, Puerto Ricans,

Mexicans, and all the minorities, all of us
must stand up together and say, no more.

Didn't you know You can't
make it without ever even trying

And something's wrong Let me explain
The confrontation was not created by the

police Let me explain The
confrontation was not created

by the police I knew that
you were breaking up with me

We're going to talk now about the
exquisite agony of the marathon runner.

Kathy Switzer is here.

Kathy was, just to
set the stage, was the

first woman ever to run
in the Boston Marathon.

She did it illegally
at the start.

In the years following
her participation in the

Boston Marathon, Switzer
became the toast of the U.S.

media.

Her story went around the
world, eventually reaching

Switzerland and the ears
of a certain Noel Tamini.

How did I learn that?

By reading the
American reviews, I think.

The history of 1967, that she
was ejected from this famous photo.

And that's where I
made sure that she could

run in Switzerland so
she wouldn't get shot.

Not really shot, but
to provoke a reaction.

To show, here's a woman.

I'm going to show
you a woman running.

In Switzerland, as elsewhere,
women were banned from

taking part in road races
by the Athletics Federation.

But Tamini managed to
persuade Katherine Switzer

to come and take part
in the Mora Fribourg race.

A European version of the Boston
Marathon, only even more inflexible.

The spirit of the
organization was...

sympathetic, but very military.

Obey, you have orders, execute.

There was no discussion
with these people.

I

knew the situation in Switzerland
for women wasn't terrific because,

I mean, I believe women couldn't
even vote in Switzerland at the time.

It was something that
really appalled me.

This time, Katherine completed the race
unhindered, but wearing a fake race number.

So once again,
running incognito.

From Switzerland, she dashed
off a postcard to a girlfriend.

Dear Susie, here in Europe,
everything's going wonderfully.

Though I'm sorry to say that here
too, I'm the only woman runner.

It was really an incredible
moment at the time for

people who remembered the
image of the Boston Marathon.

And then they said to themselves,
oh, it's happening in our country now.

And I think that it changed
a lot of ways of thinking.

I think it would
be completely...

It would be a misogyny to think that
women don't have the right to vote.

It's not about that.

We have a national trial organized
according to the coordinates.

We have problems.

It's the problems of
the Marches, it's the

problems of Nantes,
it's the problems of W.C.

it's the problems
of the Douches.

Sir, I'm not coming
from in your family, but

I insist the conditions
are clear and clear.

We have a Pseudo-Mar heut,
we have women section in the Club

ATTIC with 140 active ladies,
including western runners.

And we can't in the current state of
things take a category of women runner.

It's not a women's category,
it's signed under a man's name.

Then it's a false
name, then you're liars.

It's even worse.

You're all going to fuck
us out with this stuff.

She did it last year,
it was a problem.

We'll fix it this year.

Goodbye sir, Sir, it was
nice of you to intervene.

We took notes.

In the end, we can say that Spiridon,
the magazine, is born from a very strong

feeling that everyone can
understand, the love of freedom.

Spiridon is the name Noël Tamini chose
for the international running magazine he

started in Switzerland
around the same time.

The magazine was produced on a shoestring
and from the very beginning campaigned for

the rights of all runners and
foremost, the rights of women runners.

Sometimes it was a bit
controversial, but we had to be

controversial so that everyone
could run, especially the women.

It was the little spark
that was needed.

As well as campaigning, Spiridon
conveyed a whole new philosophy of running,

an ascetic, mystical,
back-to-nature ethos of sports.

Noël Tamini, Jean Nota, all those who
wrote at that time, a warmth, a poetry,

something that made running
something different from all other sports.

It appeared every two months,
six times a month, but we

were expecting it to be better
than the 25th of December.

We arrived at home, the street Spiridon
was arrived by mail, we jumped on it,

it was something, we were reading articles,
but from the first line to the last line.

Noël Tamini, Jean Nota, all those who
wrote at that time, were in a way genius.

His pictures were terrific.

I haven't seen those
kinds of pictures since then.

It's a bit like the singer of the foot
race, because he is a runner himself.

Before, we never had reporters who
described a race, but only seen from the

outside, while Noël lived
the race from the inside.

He knew how to motivate the reader,
and to persuade him to do the foot race.

Patio and Spiridon,
it was a good thing.

I was telling things that I felt, hoping
that it touches, that it speaks to someone.

But I remember that things
really surprised me when

people told me, I read
your editorial and I cried.

So I thought, how
the hell did I do that?

I write something and
people cry like that?

And then, the same thing,
there are people who told

me, since I have Spiridon,
my life has changed.

Meanwhile, in New York, the lives of the
Bronx marathon freaks changed when one

day, a funny little guy no one
had even seen before showed up.

He went by the name of Fred
LeBeau, and he wasn't much of a runner.

He was totally a noob to us.

He wasn't the fastest guy.

He had a swagger.

He was sort of a shuffle.

Everybody who ran was serious.

Nobody jogged.

And people were
suspicious of him at first.

They'd say, well, who's he?

Who's this person?

We don't even know who he is.

He's not one of the
die-hard runners, you know?

I don't know.

He was a strange sort of guy.

I think he liked my wife.

I know he liked my wife.

He'd run after
every girl in town.

Fred came from a
different background.

He came from the fashion industry in New
York City, which is very fancy and slick

and businesslike.

And he had come to New
York from Romania, and then he

spent time in Dublin, Ireland,
and then he came here.

And he was very successful.

Fred, at heart, was a promoter.

He said, listen, the sport is not going to
be popular if we stay here in the Bronx.

I don't know why, but he
wanted to make it grow.

I'm going to suggest that we go down to
Manhattan and we have it in Central Park.

Well, the people said,
oh, that's ridiculous.

You know, Central Park.

Wait, how can you
run in Central Park?

Nobody ever ran in Central Park.

We were happy running just every Sunday,
meeting with people and running races and

making it bigger.

That wasn't my concern.

LeBeau nagged them until he
succeeded in getting the marathon

moved from the Bronx to Central
Park in the heart of Manhattan.

A massive change, but
perhaps less so than it seemed.

It was basically a nothing race.

Not many runners, not very well organized,
I mean, in terms of water and other things.

Old fashioned running.

I mean, it was just on
the schedule and I had

worked the night before
and we had three children.

And I think my wife just
wanted to get out of the house.

But, you know, it was a very lucky,
lucky day for me that, you know,

no matter what happens, I won
the first New York City Marathon.

For several years, the
New York Marathon was held

in Central Park in these
very amateurish conditions.

Then came 1972.

Frank Shorter appears
to be running to victory,

winning an unexpected
gold medal for the USA.

It's incredible.

He seems to be just
jogging in the streets.

That was definitely a game
changer for marathon running

in this country or long
distance running in general.

I think Shorter
really appealed to the

American public because
he made it look so...

beautiful.

I won't say easy, but he
made it look like poetry.

And this was a sport that until then,
its image had been suffering, grimacing,

exhaustion, collapse,
something that was dangerous.

That really ignited both
the running movement

as a whole, but most
specifically, the marathon.

Suddenly, Americans
wanted to run the marathon.

For the bicentennial of the United States
of America, the annual marathon race

organized by the New York Road Runners
Club will leave its usual setting in

Central Park and take to the
streets of the city's five boroughs.

We all loved Boston so much
because it was in the streets.

And Fred said, we
could do that in New York.

And everybody thought
it would be impossible.

Say what?

Say when?

When?

How?

Well, and I think there was a tremendous
amount of kind of skepticism that you

could actually run a race through five
boroughs and have runners go from start to

finish without some kind of
catastrophic event happening.

At that time, the city was in decline
because financially and crime,

it wasn't a good
time for the city.

New York City.

For months, it teeters
on the brink of bankruptcy.

We're facing up to the financial
crisis confronting this city and state.

We don't get the chance.

What's the chance?

We don't get nothing.

Don't ask me what the people,
the children, I don't even know what.

People were in despair.

You know, the morale was low.

And he said, oh, listen,
we'll run through the streets.

We'll lift the whole world up.

We'll lift up New York City.

But Fred LeBeau, knew that
merely running through the streets

of New York wouldn't be enough
to put his marathon on the map.

Despite the limited
means at his disposal, he

somehow managed to
get the two stars of U.S.

running, the Olympic gold
medalist, Frank Shorter, and the U.S.

record holder, Bill Rogers, to take
part and provide the necessary glitter.

He knew that he needed
to get Frank Shorter.

Frank Shorter was the one
runner that everybody knew.

He was beyond the sport.

I've always maintained one of the reasons
I told Fred LeBeau that I would come

running the race was I had to see for
myself that they could close down streets

in five boroughs of New
York City on a Sunday.

It was like a dream
unfolding to see runners

come off the bridge
and go through Brooklyn.

The Hasidic Jew population came out of
the synagogues and were standing on the

sidewalk, and they were just... and that's
when I realized it was going to work.

I did.

Everybody saw this.

When it was just a marathon in Central
Park, not too many people watched,

and they could just say to themselves,
crazy runners taking up the park.

Now it was out on the streets,
and you see it, it's just so inspiring to

see a marathon, to see that first runner
coming in, looking so small, and then he

passes you and you
realize how fast he's running.

It's a tremendous
statement about human spirit.

And it makes you
want to do it too.

Lebo knew this.

385 yards, no one was
mugged, no one was hit by a taxi.

For the city of New York and Bill Rogers,
the marathon was a resounding success.

Dick Schaap, NBC
News, in Central Park.

And it lifted the city, it
united the city, you know,

because each borough, you
know, and it gave people hope.

And before you know it, everything started
to get better, you know, and financially,

it wasn't the only reason,
but it was part of it.

I did have that perspective
of seeing this detached

in a way that I'm
watching a miracle happen.

Central Park, in many ways, is
a legend, you know, to the sport.

This park here, around the reservoir,
was not used for running before that.

Hardly at all.

In the 1970s, there was
crime, it was dangerous.

You wouldn't walk in the park.

You wouldn't walk in here.

I'm not a track coach,
but I just figured out

how she can break, Kathy
can break three hours.

How?

Run alone in
Central Park at night.

And then as the runners came, the crime
and all the other problems disappeared.

And then the politicians and people
said, well, let's rejuvenate the park.

Let's put some money into it.

Let's make it better.

On most days when you ran, it was so
crowded, sometimes you could hardly move.

And on the reservoir or on the street,
you would routinely pass Jackie Onassis

running Robert Redford,
Dustin Hoffman, famous

people running in the same
grubby shorts and T-shirt.

Why are 10, 15, 20 million Americans
out jogging and running these days?

Well, I think they're
getting smart finally.

Well, it used to be people
used to run only for competition

or because they had to in
gym classes or whatever.

And now people are
understanding that not only

is running for fitness,
but running can be fun.

Um, I just wanted to get
the body back into shape.

How does it feel?

It feels terrific.

How long?

It doesn't feel so
good when I'm going

around, but it feels
great when I'm finished.

Take a person like me.

When I was 35 years old,
I weighed 15 or 16 stones.

I smoked 40 or
50 cigarettes a day.

I drank too much.

I started running and it was as if I
were operating a time machine in reverse.

Suddenly, I felt better than I
had felt probably in 20 years.

And now at the age
of 46, I'm sure I feel as

good as I felt when I
was 15 or 16 years old.

People now want to run.

They need to do something else.

It's not a social phenomenon.

It's a society phenomenon.

Some are grandparents.

Some are grandchildren.

Some are fast.

Some are not so fast.

Nevertheless, they
all share one goal.

To get to the finish
line in Central Park.

And to make that journey as
painless and enjoyable as possible.

Fred was among the first, I have to
say, if not the first, who began to see the

benefit of doing this over
and above accomplishment.

What he did is he set the stage for that
and he created an atmosphere that was very

welcoming to people who
just wanted to participate.

Where the great benefit of
sports is to be with others.

And that's the beauty
of the marathon.

You start together.

You start with the best.

You know, you rate with them.

And you finish.

He had a wonderful analogy for what
was appealing about the marathon.

And that was, we all
want to be on the stage.

Not everyone can be a champion, an Olympic
athlete, a performer on a Broadway stage.

But for that one day, you're
on your own stage, 26.2 miles.

And you're doing it by the
power of your own two feet.

Inspired by the New York City Marathon,
people everywhere took up running.

In Europe, the magazine
Spiridon grew into a massive

grassroots movement
that swept the continent.

Noel Tamini and his friends had grasped
that the desire to run free was catchy.

Their example and their impassioned
style spawned new races, here, there,

and everywhere.

The orange Spiridon running shirts started
appearing all over with the famous slogan,

Run With Us.

It was common in a race where you
find yourself in a hundred, if not 150,

with a Spiridon jersey.

The jersey was a
symbol of freedom.

When you were a
Spiridon, you were free.

People ran with the club jersey.

They were licensed people
who joined the federation

and they had to run
with the club jersey.

Those who were not licensed
ran with the Spiridon jersey.

It became, in a way, an emblem
of opposition in the federation.

Because despite appearances, people
were still by no means totally free to run.

And the athletics federations
continued to impose

their outdated rules on
road races and runners.

But not in Europe.

For much longer.

Revolt was in the air.

In Europe, it was epitomized by the
Marva-Jolmonde road race, a half marathon

that had originated in the
heart of the French countryside.

A wildcat event,
maintained despite being

banned by the National
Athletics Federation.

Marva-Jolmonde, I think, was a
breakthrough in this search for freedom.

To be a little bit yourself.

Until then, we were conditioned.

There were barriers.

We couldn't do this,
we couldn't do that.

Men and women
were allowed to run.

It was forbidden.

We made men and women
run, with non-licent people.

People who didn't have a
license, it was forbidden.

After the races, things were happening
that we can't describe, some kind of orgy.

That's what they were telling.

It wasn't an orgy,
it was a party.

We danced, we had fun, we drank.

In the very austere
context of these

competition on the
track, it didn't go away.

The distances made
us run, they were crazy.

We made young people run,
but it was going to kill them for life.

As long as only a handful of eccentrics
wanted to run road races, the federations

and the athletics establishment had
more or less turned a blind eye to them.

But with the movement
growing, much more was at stake.

What interested them was
to get their licenses back.

Of course.

They had very few.

They were losing them.

And we had more and more
people who wanted to run.

All these people without a
license, it interested them.

They started to
want to suspend us.

Jean-Claude Moulin
made fun of us.

I was removed from
my license for one year.

They tried to kill me.

You are killing athletics.

You are murderers of athletics.

The decentralized structures of the French
Federation moved on Marbe-Jolmande trying

to prevent the race with
cars and trying to block it.

They were trying to stop
Jean-Claude Moulin's car

which at first was almost
throwing itself from above.

It was tough.

It was tough.

Road runners were not the only ones
butting heads with the governing bodies.

Track runners also had
to remain amateurs if

they wanted to take part
in the Olympic Games.

In the USA, where they were not allowed
to earn a single cent from their sport on

pain of being disqualified for life, the
situation was dire for leading athletes.

But, they gritted their teeth and
submitted to the Federation's bullying.

All that changed when Steve
Prefontaine burst onto the scene.

Well, I think there's
going to have to be a

reworking of the whole
amateur athlete as a whole.

There's a lot of things that I
think that should be changed.

Well, I don't think we
have time to go in them all

because I could talk probably
for a couple hours on them.

Pre was the champion
of runner's rights.

He wanted equality for runners.

Every other athlete in the world
got paid for doing their sport.

Runners did not.

And he thought that that
was just a huge injustice.

But Prefontaine was not
just a powerful spokesperson.

He was first and foremost an
exceptionally talented runner.

At just 21, he already had a two-year
unbeaten run and held all the U.S.

track records from
2,000 to 10,000 meters.

Steve Prefontaine was maybe the
most exciting athlete I've ever seen.

He had a ferocity that was just in his
personality and in his eyes and in his

actions and in his attitude
that I've never seen anywhere.

Michael Jordan, Wayne
Gretzky, Tiger Woods, there's

something that whatever
they have, Pre had it.

The performer, he
was a performer.

It was a question of how
people were louder for him, more

people connected with him than
anyone who had come before then.

And as it turns out, anyone who's come
since has been the champion of his track

success, his charisma and his outspokenness
made Prefontaine the people's champion.

Crowds went wild for him,
especially on his home track

in Eugene, Oregon where his
appearances sparked hysteria.

Prefontaine in a
surprise move there.

He said he didn't enter
this race to be second.

And the crowd went wild.

Season after season,
ever bigger crowds flock to

see Prefontaine win,
generating colossal revenues.

But not for Pre himself.

To remain an amateur he
had to scrape by and live in

a trailer while others cashed
in on his performances.

I like the I could possibly go to
the 76 games, if financially possible,

but right now I'm just
kind of floating along.

The workers were getting
peanuts, and the director was

making reasonable money for
himself and for the Federation.

And it didn't feel good.

It didn't feel good at all.

It felt like slavery.

Running doesn't pay your bills, so
you've got to make a lot of sacrifices

to be an amateur
sport in this country,

considering it's so
professionally oriented.

He was the consummate spokesperson for the
sport of running, not just Prefontaine and

Who Am I?, but he reached out,
and the AAU battle started right away,

because here's a guy who
was not going to follow the old,

archaic, out-of-touch rules
of the old governing body.

In his campaign for a better deal for
runners, Prefontaine soon found support in

the shape of a small
running shoe company that

had just started up in
his home state of Oregon.

As soon as he was
out of college, they

recruited him to help
with their PR operations.

The image of Prefontaine as a
rebel, as running free, with his long,

shaggy hair and his big mustache,
kind of fighting the establishment,

I mean, that was there.

That was true, I
think, to an extent.

And then Nike, as a small
company, embraced this.

The company was small.

There may have been
less than 15 people.

I don't know.

I don't remember.

Very small.

The first logo that we came
out with was a script logo.

And, you know, a script,
lowercase script logo.

And the beginning of the N had a little
lead into it, which looked like another

leg, and it looked like an
M as much as it did an N.

And so a lot of
people misread it.

And I just asked
that very question.

Who is Mike?

It was youthful.

It was kind of carefree, because
you didn't worry about too much.

Everybody was involved with
running in one way or another.

We were trying to do anything we
could to help the sport get better.

And, I mean, put on a road race,
battled the governing bodies, support Pre.

Whatever it was, the collectiveness of that
added value big time to the running boom.

So Prefontaine was able to count on
Nike's help when in 1975 he decided to take

matters into his own hands
and organize the very first

competitive athletic circuit
set up by athletes for athletes.

Over-challenged to the
amateur athletic union, which had

always forbidden athletes from
competing in unofficial events.

And to make sure it was
a success, Pre also invited

Finland's leading runners
to come to the USA.

The athletes have enough hassles without
being told what to do, when and where,

and throwing in new rules now and then to
benefit themselves instead of the athletes.

You know, at the end of the day,
the most important thing you get out of

all this international
competition is the friendships.

These are our friends.

Here's where we are.

This is really cool.

Come see this.

We want to share this with you.

That was the atmosphere
for these competitions.

Pre's independent circuit came to a
triumphant end on May 29, 1975, in Eugene.

Pre won the 5,000 meters ahead of his
friend Olympic medal-winning marathon

runner Frank Shorter and
was already planning the

next step in this struggle
for athletes' independence.

He was willing to go to the mat with those
people, and did, and he stood up to them.

He was a rebel.

But he was always
fighting for the cause of the

athletes and putting
himself at risk sometimes.

Until today, Steve
Prefontaine was ahead of

everyone in this country
as a long-distance runner.

He held the American records in
the 3,000-meter, the 2-mile, the 3-mile,

the 5,000-meter, the 6-mile,
and the 10,000-meter race.

Early today, his sports car jumped a curb
on an Oregon highway and flipped over.

He was alone, and he was killed.

He was 24.

Never a shock is it possible for
me to ever get anything like that now.

It's an incredible
life just gone.

He was our glory.

And we were his.

And it's up to us now to hold
in mind clearly, to remember

him as he touched us and
infuriated us and challenged us.

Time holds him, green and dying,
though he sang in his chains like the sea.

I was lost in my own thoughts.

I was lost in my own thoughts.

Um...

I don't know.

At the end of it is various people,
you know, talked about him, and then,

you know, now we'll have a moment of
silence and picture him running his last

lap of what would have
been a world record.

And...

Yeah, you...

It was a pretty emotional day.

It was a pretty emotional day.

As we all know, part of what caused that
revolution in road running was Prefontaine.

His standing up to the AAU was the first
part of it, but the second part was his

death really caused people
to assess what was important.

And to them, it was freedom and being able
to make a living doing what you love to do.

You know, having somebody who is the most
famous person in American track and field

take a stand made it easier in the
years to come for others to do the same.

Bill Rogers, the best marathon runner
in the country, proved that again today by

winning the Boston
Marathon for the third time.

He even broke his own record.

Today, he ran 2 hours, 9
minutes and 27 seconds.

We all wanted to
be professionals.

We wanted to be respected like other
athletes or anyone in America who had a

job gets paid for it, you
know, or anywhere in the world.

If you're good
at it, you're paid.

So why were we so different?

And we didn't feel we were.

The hundreds of thousands of people
who will watch the New York Marathon run a

week from Sunday will watch
a race exploding in controversy.

More from Reggie Harris.

Next weekend, more than 16,000 runners will
participate in the New York City Marathon.

Technically, all of them
are amateur athletes.

And amateurs run for
competition, not for money.

But the New York Times reports coaches
of some top marathoners say under-the-table

prize money is being offered to
get big-name runners to show up.

That would violate rules of the
International Amateur Athletic Federation,

or IAAF, which sanctions
the New York City Marathon.

And if prize money is being paid, it
would jeopardize the amateur status of

many athletes who hope to
compete in the 1984 Olympics.

The New York Road Runners Club,
Fred LeBeau, declined to confirm or deny

the Times allegations,
but he says it's

time for marathoners
to win big prize money.

I believe a runner like Bill Rogers,
who trains twice a day, every single day

of the year, is as much an
athlete as a Reggie Jackson.

Fred LeBeau.

Fred LeBeau was paying runners from
the start at the New York City Marathon.

Not openly, but they
were getting paid.

There's been a lot of
dispute about under-the-table

payments to these
so-called world-class athletes.

Do they get paid?

Well, we're not really ignoring the
situation, but this has been going on for

a long time in track and field,
whether runners get paid or not.

It's a subject that's under very deep
discussion right now within the athletic

congress and the world
bodies on this subject.

They could lose their
amateur standing.

That's right.

And we wouldn't do
anything that would jeopardize

their eligibility to
compete internationally.

I understand that.

I hope you're not
paying for anyone.

That's what the mayor said.

I hope you're not.

Oh, he said, no, no,
I would never do that.

I'd never pay for anything.

Meanwhile, he was
paying everybody.

They said, I hope you're
not giving away all the money.

This is supposed to
be not... Oh, not at all.

No, I'd never do that.

Meanwhile, all these people started
appearing from all around the world.

Everywhere.

Australia, Japan, Europe.

France.

Oh, my God.

They all were coming.

In the late 1970s, the practice of making
under-the-table payments to top athletes

became commonplace in the road race
community, whose members were the first to

raise their voices against the
Federation's hypocritical attitude.

The far-sighted Fred LeBeau, who
had never been afraid to be provocative,

decided it was
time to clear the air.

He wrote a book that openly
referred to those payments.

The total price money we
paid over the years to the

highest finishers in New
York reached a million dollars.

New York Mayor Edward Koch
gave the Roadrunners a new deal.

For every dollar the club now spends
on appearance fees and prize money,

it must also give
a dollar to the city.

In effect, the publication
of LeBeau's book may have

cost the Roadrunners more
than $300,000 this year.

In retrospect, if I knew
the ruckus it would cause, I

would have not published
the book in the first place.

It turned out this is the most
expensive book ever published.

We pay millions of dollars to the city
for the police protection for 26 miles.

But that's been going on for some years,
although those fees have been going up.

Nowadays, running has become a
race just as much for money as for glory.

In Chicago today, the winners of
the marathon got $45,000 each.

Early 80s, they were
saying, we don't care about

your rules, we're going to
give money and take money.

And they threw down the challenge and
the amateur officials couldn't answer it.

And before long, the entire sport was
open to whatever you can get, take it.

Male track and road
champions were not the only ones

to throw off their shackles
at the end of the 70s.

Women had also gradually won the
right to run on roads alongside men.

But there were still far fewer
women than men running in races.

Until Katherine Switzer heard of a madcap
scheme proposed by a major cosmetics firm

to create a women-only
international running race circuit.

Wow.

This will be the avenue
to get women into running.

Not saying, hey, come join us in the
marathon where there are two women and

there are 800 men, because you're
going to feel slow and not welcome.

Come in a women's-only race.

More than 400 runners
competed in the first

all-female 15-kilometer
run in Arizona this morning.

650 women setting out to do what
was once considered the impossible.

More than 1,000 women
compete in a half marathon.

I don't think we've even
seen the tip of the iceberg.

It's really incredible.

We had to overcome centuries
of beliefs that women have

inherent weakness and
passivity, as Aristotle said.

And it's been really all those years to
make a change, a cultural revolution,

a social revolution, and I
say an intellectual one as well.

It was just an amazing feel
to give that back to so many

women around the country
and really around the world.

I would now like to organize foot
races for women in the third world.

They were so poor that
they never had anybody

that said that they
could be somebody.

And when they finished a 5K race or a
10K race and we gave them a T-shirt and a

medal and a lipstick gift and
said, you are somebody, they

understood this sense of
empowerment and fearlessness.

And they really, really
changed their lives completely.

You know, whether she
made best time or what, for

her it's an improvement
and that's what counts.

I'd just like to thank
them for the opportunity.

I think it's a fantastic thing.

It became phenomenally good for the
corporation because they were getting very

excellent publicity,
doing something that was

unusual and capturing
the public imagination.

And everybody agreed that women did
deserve an opportunity in the Olympics.

There's going to be a new
world record for greater bates.

Perhaps the greatest
marathon ever run, Joan Benoit.

Every year, the women's
marathon time keeps going down.

In 10 years, it has
dropped almost 45 minutes.

This was the first year in
more than 10 years that the

men's record has dropped and
that was just by a few seconds.

In the early 80s, 1,500
meters was still the longest

distance the International
Athletic Federation could reach.

The women's marathon would
be sanctioned for a women's race.

And although women were now free to run,
many people were still prejudiced against

the idea of women
running long distances in the

Olympic Games, even
more so for the marathon.

We would like to participate in the
women's marathon in the Olympic Games.

Yay!

The women's marathon
in the Olympic Games.

In 1980, four years before the Los Angeles
Olympics, Katherine Switzer cleverly chose

to hold her circuit's annual marathon
in London, where the International

Federation, the IAAF,
had its headquarters.

A sunny warm day dawns
in London for the third

annual Avon Women's
International Marathon.

This is a turning point
for women's running.

The representation of 27 countries
at the starting line now surpasses the

International Olympic Committee's
requirements for a new event.

We

had excellent performances.

We had incredible
media coverage.

We had the
endorsement of the IAAF.

And the IAAF then made a
recommendation to the IOC

to get the women's marathon
in the Olympic Games.

I remember when Monique Berlieu stood
up and made the announcement, she said,

this was not an easy decision,
but it was a very important decision.

And I turned to my friend who was in
the audience with me, and I said, nobody is

going to understand how important
this moment is until the first woman comes

through that tunnel and
into the Olympic Stadium.

Joan Benoit is running in a direction
away from the rest of the pack as well.

You know, Al, people speculated that
it would either be a tactical race or that

Joan Benoit was going to
eventually take it out very hard.

And here she is.

It looks like she's going to
make her move really early.

You know, when it came time
for the Los Angeles Olympics,

ABC asked me to be a commentator
for the women's marathon.

She gets into some
welcome shade and then

very shortly out into
the sunlight once again.

I was trying at this point
not to get emotional.

I was trying to be
very, very calm.

And as she entered the
tunnel, Al Michaels turned

to all of us and he went,
let the crowd take it.

To me, that moment was, was as important
as giving women the right to vote because

it represented the physical equivalent
of total acceptance into society.

And that people around the world,
not just those 90,000 people in that

Olympic stadium, but people around the
world in their millions were watching on

television and realized that somebody
had just run 26 miles, 385 yards, 42.

2 kilometers, the most
difficult event in the Olympic

games, and run it with heroic
courage and grace and speed.

And it changed forever
people's attitudes

about what women's
capability was all about.

A dramatic step forward
for women in sports,

for women athletes
all around the world.

Indeed, for women in
general, it attracted the

attention of literally
hundreds of women's groups.

How much does that
particular historic fact have to

do with the degree of
elation you feel right now?

Well, again, Jim, I
don't think it's set in.

As I said earlier, there's so many
people I have to thank this marathon for.

If it hadn't been for the work of
countless women pioneers in the sport,

we wouldn't be here today.

And let's hope that in 1988 we can also
run a 5 and 10K because we showed today

that women can be very
competitive over resistance.

We were just wrapping up our coverage
and just about ending the show, and I was

feeling, you know, relieved when all of
a sudden, out of the tunnel and into the

stadium came the very,
very crippled-over image,

figure of Gabriel Anderson
Schiess from Switzerland.

The Calvary of Gabby
Anderson Schiess.

Gabby Anderson Schiess
from Switzerland has

scored more than four
minutes for the team.

She has scored more than
three minutes to make the

300 meters, the first 300
meters of the Tour de Terra.

And now Gabby
Anderson Schiess is trying.

Look at this view.

She's going from the
fourth lane to the rope.

She's completely bent.

She tilts.

She's at the end
of her strength.

She's totally dehydrated.

She absolutely wants to finish.

This is an absolutely crazy
image that we have here.

This image is terrible.

Is she going to collapse
before she arrives?

She still has 60 meters left,
even more than 50 meters to go.

Ah, the marathon drama.

We thought it
didn't exist anymore.

Dorando will collapse
at the end of the

marathon, before the
war, before the first war.

The Belgian from Cailly, sitting in Wembley
in 1948, is passed by Cabrera and Peters.

And now it's an Elvis
who is in this state.

He still has 20 meters to
Gabby Anderson Schiess.

It's the most terrible image we've ever
seen in a marathon since television exists.

Another 10 meters.

Another 10 meters.

She's in the third lane.

Another 5 meters.

3 meters.

2 meters.

1 meter.

And she's passed.

And she's passed.

And she collapses.

Under the screams of the crowd.

In 2 hours 48 minutes and 41 seconds,
Gabby Anderson Schiess, with her will and

courage, but she will
have a lot of pain to

recover this effort, just
finished her marathon.

It was a terrible image, and at the same
time, demonstrating the will of this woman.

And I thought, oh no.

Oh no.

This can't be happening.

Because they're
going to make a media

frenzy of a woman in
a distressed condition.

So when she finished and was carted off,
I just sort of left the studio thinking,

I don't know what's going to happen
now with the women's marathon.

Still on the Los Angeles Olympics,
we've had an update on the health of

Gabriella Anderson Schiess, the female
marathon runner who touched hearts

everywhere the day
before yesterday when she

finished the race in a
state of total exhaustion.

And it's good news.

It seems she was just severely dehydrated
and has made a very quick recovery.

In fact, she's already
back in training.

Afterwards, my husband Roger Robinson
wrote one of the best statements about it.

He said one of the most amazing things
about the 1984 women's Olympic marathon,

the inaugural, was it allowed
women to be exhausted in public.

Maybe that's what
equality is also all about.

Today, the New York City Marathon
has become the world's most famous race.

And this Sunday, 24,000 lucky people
will have the opportunity to run its 26.

4 miles, a challenging
distance for any level.

Even in the height of what we would call
the running boom, the early running boom,

the first running boom, Fred
used to say, this is nothing.

This is nothing.

Just watch.

Fred really wanted the
whole world of running to grow

and the New York Roadrunners
to be a leader in that.

And so bigger was always better.

When I read that there are 34 million
Americans who run or jog, I wondered where

the rest of the 60 million are that should
be running, or at least race walking.

New York suddenly realized they had this
event that was bringing money in for the

city on an economic basis, which
they had never really dreamed about.

And other cities started seeing that this
was happening, and along came London,

Chicago, Los Angeles, Honolulu.

Now there is no city worthy of this
name that wouldn't have a marathon.

In the 1990s, cities throughout the world
understood that there was big money to be

made from organizing
marathons, even though

New York remained by
far the most glamorous.

I happen to think that New
York City is very special, and

I'm proud that it is the
marathon capital of the world now.

Many marathons around the world
have copied much of what we're doing,

from barcodes to computer
scanning, to timing and scoring devices.

But the one thing that
no marathon in the country

or the world can match
is the vitality of the city.

He would have these plans in his mind that
it would be increasing the sponsorship,

increasing the number
of people who could run.

He said, look, I want every
runner here who comes

to this marathon to
have the best experience.

I want to make sure
they have a cover.

I want to make sure
they get the food.

I want to make sure they have...

that they're taken care
of in every way, you know.

Oh, well, let's have coffee
and donuts at the starting line.

But Fred, that's not
a healthy thing to do.

But they'll love it.

We'll have a race
on Wall Street.

Wall Street?

How can you have a race there?

Then he got the going backwards
race, people running backwards.

Press agents were out in force at the
Empire State Building, staging a publicity

stunt so silly that we
decided to cover it.

Let's run up the
Empire State Building.

Well, great idea.

Turned out to be, at the time.

They're giving people jingle bells so
that they can make noise when they run.

And people are dressed in
Santa Claus outfits and reindeer.

They have antlers on.

And I'm going, what
happened to my sport?

What next?

There's just a lot more to do.

Nobody is indispensable.

But as far as the marathon
is concerned, LeBeau

comes as close to being
indispensable as anybody.

He was like the Pied Piper.

You know, the story of the Pied Piper who
plays his flute and the rest of us follow.

Those were his workers, but
those were also the runners and

the other people who took
advantage of the events he put on.

They loved what he built.

And so that was his gift, that he
could bring us all into his vision.

And that he could create from his vision
an event that appealed to millions of

people, whether you ran
or whether you watched.

That was Fred's genius.

Run and you'll be thinner Run to give your
heart a thrill Run Run to be a winner Not

just run of the mill Keep up the pace
And we promise you'll hit new highs Stay in

the race And your spirits
will rise Rise, rise, run!

Well, I sure hope you liked it.

We're back on our new
award ceremony program.

It surprised me.

I was at the dinner.

It was a big dinner.

You know, they used to have the
big dinner for awards, you know.

And he got up to speak.

And up to that point, there
was nothing, you know.

I mean, he was fine, you know.

And he got up to speak, and right in the
middle of his speech, he stopped talking.

You know, he forgot what to say, you
know, which he never did, you know, ever.

I was concerned about it.

So I sent him actually on my own right the
next day up to my hospital to get an MRI.

And that's when the, you know,
the tumor was there right away.

We detected it, you
know, almost immediately.

He had a kind of brain
tumor that you can

extend your life, but
nobody recovers from this.

It's still one of the most
lethal forms of cancer.

But Fred never
saw things that way.

I would go see him.

I saw him when he
was at Mount Sinai.

He had a pole, you know.

He had the pole, you know, with the
intravenous and the bag and all this stuff.

And he had around the corridors, he
had it marked off to how far was a mile.

And he was going
down the corridor.

He was going like this.

And the nurses say, all he does is
he keeps going around and around.

So he refused to accept it.

You know, he refused.

He fought like the devil.

I don't have a wife.

I don't have any kids.

But it is like
nurturing a child.

For 23 years, that's all I did.

You know, I worked also, but the marathon
is the most consuming thing in my life.

I've run 68 other marathons,
but never New York City.

A few months ago, I turned 60.

I told my staff, no
parties, no receptions.

I just want to
give myself a gift.

That's to finish the marathon.

If visionary race director Fred Liebow
manages to cross his own finish line

today, he'll have finally
captured his own American dream.

For 23 years, he's staged
New York City's biggest hit.

Today, his entry will
provide a lot of the drama.

I always say that outside
of having my two children, it

was the most remarkable
experience I'd ever witnessed.

I had the pleasure and the privilege to
run behind Fred and Greta in that marathon.

And I don't think anyone
has ever gotten the

cheers and support along
the course that Fred did.

Jan, we're coming up
on the halfway point,

and I really have to
take my hat off to Fred.

He's been clicking
off 12-minute miles.

I've seen a lot of
cancer patients in my

day, but I haven't seen
any that can do this.

I am truly impressed.

And to this day, I can barely
talk about it without choking up.

You understood that it was the ultimate
statement of Fred saying, I'm alive,

I'm here.

And it was then that I fully understood
that's why all of us run the marathon.

It's the ultimate way of
saying, I'm alive, I'm here.

Fred died two years later.

In his lifetime, he ran 69
marathons across the world.

The last one was
in New York in 1992.

In the space of a decade, Fred LeBeau's
insatiable appetite had transformed the

New York City Marathon from a
small association of volunteers to a large

professional organization whose revenues
swelled to tens of millions of dollars.

To Fred, money
was only a vehicle.

He had no interest
in it personally.

And he used money and
greed of others to create power.

And he thought he
could control it all.

Americans now spend
more than $500 million a year.

On shoes to run.

The initial few hundred
runners had become

tens of thousands,
then millions worldwide.

All these runners in need of shoes,
clothing and gear represented a willing

target for all those involved in
the overgrown business of running.

However for some other people, it
spelled the end of an era and the loss

of the romance and
innocence of the early days.

Fred LeBeau, New York City Marathon
Manager, New York City Marathon Once that

exposure... started and more people
came to it, we were no longer unusual.

We were no longer the freaks.

The revolution diluted.

I'm not saying it's completely
gone, but the revolution...

diluted itself in the mass, in the
way, in the period after the war.

Spiridon opened a home of Pandora,
in that he was the one that contributed to

the release of hordes of people,
quienesjangeni were more numerous.

Up soon after they demanded
aPressure on found authenticity.

A real institution Türk

The pressure, the commercial
pressures of continuing

the magazine meant that you
had to go look for sponsors.

And the sponsors
always want something.

And the sponsors wanted
to sell running shoes or

sell shirts or sell, you
know, vitamins or all this.

And so, in a way, they sold out
the, you know, the spirit of the early,

you know, spirit of running
to this era of commercialism.

You could argue,
what could we do?

And in a way, I'm glad that
we hadn't all decided to stop.

What could I do?

How could I repeat myself?

As some do today.

You, who run the
marathon, for the first time,

try to run for three
hours and then leave.

I couldn't do that.

That was the
salad I didn't like.

So I was happy to have given up and
to finally be free to do something else.

Even though I was very
poor, but at least I was free.

As running grew, we all kept
congratulating ourselves that we were in a

movement that was entirely positive,
healthy, open, inclusive, raises a lot of

money for charity, helps health,
helps society, brings cities like New York

together, is symbolic of freedom,
you know, like at Berlin in 1990.

All of those very
positive things.

And then we got bigger
and bigger and bigger.

And then the crunch came.

And we have had to back
off and look at ourselves

and say, it's actually
not all positive.

There is a darker side
to what we've achieved.

Hurricane Sandy is now
approaching the east coast of the USA.

People of New York City
are preparing for the crunch.

We have not experienced
anything on this scale.

We just want everyone to know that we
are hurting down here and we need help.

We need help.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg refuses to cancel
the marathon despite New York's struggle

to recover from the
devastation caused by Sandy.

The city of New York right
now is talking about getting

water out of the battery tunnel
and preparing for a marathon.

We are pulling
bodies out of water.

You see the disconnect here?

Every single person on
this block lost everything.

It's not enough.

We tried to get out of
the 5th avenue and this

neighborhood to measure
the disaster that was all around.

We knew that they had emptied some
hospitals to take people in emergency.

I want to go home,
but there's no home.

I can't go home.

That's killing me.

They're going to run a marathon and
worry about how many people are in the car

before they worry about who's got
electricity and who's got water to drink.

It's been quite the last 24 hours since
the mayor decided that the best thing for

the city of New York was for
the marathon to go on on Sunday.

They were some tough days.

They were days where the challenge was
what is the right thing to do and what's

possible for the city and
ultimately for runners.

This has always been known as
the greatest day in the life of the city.

And if this city is on the road to
recovery, to show its resilience,

to show the world that this is the greatest
city in the world, then this race goes on.

We were convinced that
the marathon had to go on.

That was the history
of the marathon.

It lifted the city.

And in hindsight, we were wrong.

We felt that in terms of the
city, the organizers had a

will to keep us in the
artifice until the last moment.

Good evening Brian.

Well, the anger was
really triggered in earnest

today in large part by
these generators behind me.

Race organizers brought them
in to power things like race clocks.

They're large enough
to power 400 homes.

And as the anger grew today,
the mayor had to respond.

Finally, he canceled
the race late today.

Thank God.

My reaction is...

I'm glad they're coming to
their senses and realizing

that races are going to be
needed where it's truly needed.

You know, Paul Duplanc
at the last minute, he

could have made that
decision days and days ago.

We are very angry.

We spent thousands of dollars to
bring our family here, pay for hotel rooms,

airline tickets.

We were still inside at the expo,
buying tickets to the pasta dinner,

buying paraphernalia,
spending hundreds of dollars.

There are people who left Paris yesterday
thinking that the marathon had taken place.

They go through customs,
immigration, and they're

told, you know, you're
here for nothing, guys.

It's not cool.

Some runners say
they're going home.

They're going home
as soon as possible.

Others say they're going to stay in the
city and try to enjoy it the best they can.

A few say they're running on
Sunday, 26 miles, even without the race.

There was a marathon that
was organized despite everything.

It's called the marathon
despite everything.

Some ran on Sunday morning,
while we had taken out corpses

from the line, close to the
starting line, at two miles.

There was the corpse
of a mother and her

daughter who had been
taken out in the morning.

In the end, it's quite simple.

A small invitation on Facebook,
and then we're back at 10 miles,

after a footing at Central Park.

Those who ran,
some had eggs, rocks.

The crowd didn't
want to see that.

And they didn't want to see
people who were eager to run

in circumstances that were,
on the other hand, dramatic.

The marathon movement,
the whole running movement,

had to confront the fact
that not everybody loves us.

That we socially, running had not
achieved all that it could achieve.

That socially, even though we've grown,
even though we're huge, we're actually

only huge in a very
small segment of society.

And if you look at
the average income of

marathon runners, it's
over $100,000 a year.

Well, if you're living on Staten Island,
you know, that's a different planet.

And that's not an activity
that you feel you relate to.

And we realized that we should not
continue to expect that poor people will

stand along the streets
and cheer for rich people.

Noel Tamini must
think that it's a little far

from the values he had
promoted at the start.

As long as no one forbids us to go
running in the forest at the time we want,

life is beautiful.

There's no need to
complain too much.

It's true.

For the moment, we still feel free to
go running when we want in the forest.

You know, it's like the Robert
Frost thing, the road less taken.

You can always go
on the road less taken.

The fact of reintegrating what I call
the integral race, it's the race alone,

out of any popular gathering,
out of any idea of competition.

But this kind of entering into
the forest, out of the nature,

out of being alone with
oneself, nothing can replace it.

People

will go out every single day
and looking at their watches.

Throw the watch away.

Look at the stars.

Look at the sky.

Look at the...

Sport is still whatever
we want to make of it.

Remember

when we sat in your car
and you told me all about

the stars and how you'd
make it up there one day.

Hum and whistle
through and you would try.

You told me about the only one
you'd ever read, never seen before.

Nothing else, it
seemed important.

Everyone a disappointment.

So, oh, oh...

Monsieur!

Ah, d'accord,
d'accord, d'accord.

What's the matter?

I'm charged.

Can I have one of each?

Yeah, please.

And you, really?

That's a... My magazine.

We have a magazine
a long time ago.

30 years ago.

About the... about the running.

Courez tous avec nous.

Wow.

Courez tous avec nous.

Run all with us.

Yes.

Like today.