Should Mayor Bloomberg have postponed the NY Marathon?

The runners should look at the bright side: They're all in that much better physical condition from all of the training they've done leading up to the race.

 

One thing about the NYC Marathon. Most runners are FROM NYC, or New Jersey, or Connecticut or Long Island, Westchester, etc. How many would have been no-shows because their lives are upside down right now? Just not having the gas to get to the race in the first place would do it.

 

Just saw some douchebag on the Weather Channel. The guy did have a point about how Bloomberg dragged the decision out this long and how a lot of people flew in for the race. But watching the guy, it was like, seriously? Yeah, it sucks that you had to spend money to come here and not race. But quit whining, there's people who have had their lives totally fucked up.

 

I understand the complaints, since if Bloomberg/NYRR had spoken up sooner, it would have minimized disruption to yet more lives. However, with the runners and marathon tourists here, New York City gets the economic bump -- but those hotel rooms could have been used by people without power after Sandy.

I'm sticking with my original plan: run the race, play all the games. But donate the proceeds to local nonprofits who are participating in the relief efforts.

 

This.

 

I hope those who are in the city already team up tomorrow to do something good. Even if it's symbolic.

 

Doubtful. Assuming most of the 2 million who line the parade route are already New Yorkers, they would be spending a significant amount of the money they'll spend along the route anyway. Maybe they wouldn't spend quite as much, but they wouldn't be spending nothing, so you have to factor that in to any economic estimate.

You also have to factor in people who aren't coming to the city because of the marathon, and the money they would have otherwise spent.

Those are counterfactuals, so there isn't a way to prove them. But when it comes to economic impact estimates of sporting events and sporting facilities, there's a lot of research out there that shows the impacts are always overstated, and usually greatly overstated. The general rule is to take the economic impact estimate and divide by 10, and that's a much more realistic guess.

 

Huge difference. You're talking about one event that winds 26 miles through every borough, with a route that would go past the worst of the damage, had it been run.
A football game or a basketball game? It's in a relatively small, enclosed field of play and static fan seating.
And I still contend marathoning is a niche sport. 34,000 runners? Big deal. Non-BCS bowls games like the Chick-Fil-A get way more than that with out of town visitors/fans who buy tickets. There were about 15 bowl games that had twice that or more in attendance.
And how many of those 2 million people lining the route just come out of their house for a few minutes to see what all the fuss is about?

 

Throw out a stupid idea here, since the event was not cancelled soon enough:

For the couple of hundred or so elite runners who had already come into town, why not find a place that has a track, and let them run around it a gazillion times to equal 26.2. Fox could use their NASCAR tracking software to keep track of the top 43 runners.

Those diehard fans who had already come to the NYC area can sit in the stands, and watch them go round and round. Spectators could then continually watch the leaders instead of just seeing them pass by once on the course. It would be different, but at least it isn't nothing.

And the proceeds of it all, while not as much as the real thing, could go towards disaster relief.

My overall opinion is that the marathon should have been cancelled/postponed on Wednesday when the amount of devastation had some preliminary estimates. But, given they assed around until late Friday afternoon, and lots of runners and spectators had descended on them, maybe some very limited event for those favorites who were likely to win the event could have been showcased way uptown, maybe Columbia?

No way you can run all 30,000 or 45,000 runners, but for the few hundred elite, it would have been something rather than nothing. Could even have a rule that if you get lapped five times, you are out. Watching people avoid getting lapped would be like watching NASCAR for the fun of seeing crashes.

Anyway, just a thought. Not sure if it would have been workable, but boy, did they screw the pooch by acting like the show would go on, all the way up through Friday afternoon.

 

Why haven't they started already? Hit the ground running, bad pun intended.

 

YES!!! wtf took him so freakin' long? talk about being outta touch... bloomberg's 'let 'em eat cake' moment....

 

Aside from Katrina, the only natural disaster that comes close to this is Loma Prieta, and Fay Vincent had the good sense to wait until the area was ready for the resumption of the World Series.