FIVE BOROUGHS, ONE FINISH LINE: THE HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK CITY MARATHON

In 1992, Fred Lebow ran the New York City Marathon for the last time. He was 60 years old, battling brain cancer, and accompanied by his friend Grete Waitz, the nine-time champion who had first shown up in 1978 not even sure she could finish the distance. They crossed the line together in 5:32:35. Lebow died two years later. A bronze statue of him checking his watch now stands at the entrance to Central Park, near the finish line of the race he invented.

The New York City Marathon is not the fastest major marathon. It is not the oldest. But it may be the most important. The race that started with 55 finishers running loops in Central Park became the template for the modern mass-participation city marathon, and every big-city race founded since 1976 owes something to the blueprint Fred Lebow drew.

Central Park and the Beginning

The first New York City Marathon took place on September 13, 1970, entirely within Central Park. Vince Chiappetta and other members of the New York Road Runners club organized the event. Entry fee was one dollar. Of 127 starters, 55 finished. Gary Muhrcke, a New York City firefighter, won in 2:31:38.

Lebow, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor who had taken up running in his thirties, became the race director and spent the next six years growing the event within Central Park. By 1975, the field had grown to several hundred, but the race remained a local affair.

The Five-Borough Revolution

Everything changed in 1976. To celebrate the American bicentennial, Ted Corbitt proposed moving the race out of Central Park and through all five boroughs of New York City. With support from Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton and a reluctant Lebow, the city approved a route that started on Staten Island, crossed the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and wound through Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan before finishing in Central Park.

The 1976 race drew 2,090 runners, a fivefold increase from the previous year. Bill Rodgers won the men's race in 2:10:10. Miki Gorman, at age 41, won the women's race in 2:39:11. The five-borough course was intended as a one-time bicentennial celebration. It became permanent.

The route worked because it turned the marathon into a citywide event. Each borough brought its own crowd, its own noise, its own character. The Verrazzano start, the Bedford-Stuyvesant crowds, the Queensboro Bridge silence, the First Avenue roar, the Bronx detour, and the Central Park finish created a narrative arc that no other marathon could match.

Grete Waitz and the Women's Race

In 1978, Norwegian schoolteacher Grete Waitz entered the NYC Marathon almost on a dare from her husband. She had never run more than 12 miles. She won in 2:32:30, a world record, and promptly vomited.

Waitz came back and won eight more times, nine total between 1978 and 1988. She broke the women's world record three times in New York. Her dominance defined the women's race and elevated it to equal status with the men's competition at a time when women's distance running was still fighting for legitimacy.

Ingrid Kristiansen broke Waitz's New York course record with 2:25:30 in 1989. But Waitz remained the face of the women's race, and her nine titles are a record that will almost certainly never be broken at any World Marathon Major.

The Golden Era

The 1980s and 1990s were the race's golden age. Alberto Salazar won three straight titles (1980-1982), including a finish-line duel with Dick Beardsley in 1982 that remains one of the greatest races in marathon history. Salazar's 2:08:13 in 1981 was a world best at the time.

The international fields deepened through the 1990s and 2000s. Juma Ikangaa of Tanzania, German Silva of Mexico (famous for his wrong-turn near-disaster in 1994), and John Kagwe of Kenya all claimed titles. The women's race saw Tegla Loroupe win back-to-back in 1994-1995 and Margaret Okayo set a course record of 2:22:31 in 2003.

The Course and Its Character

The modern NYC Marathon course starts at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. Runners cross the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, the longest single span in the Americas at the time of its opening, with views of the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan. The bridge climb and descent in the first two miles set the tone: this is not a course designed for world records.

Brooklyn provides 11 miles of flat running through Bay Ridge, Park Slope, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint. The crowd support through Brooklyn is among the loudest in distance running. Runners enter Queens via the Pulaski Bridge, pass through Long Island City, and then face the Queensboro Bridge at mile 15.

The Queensboro Bridge is notoriously quiet. Spectators are not allowed, and the uphill grade arrives just as the race begins to hurt. But the exit onto First Avenue at mile 16 is one of the great sensory experiences in the sport: a wall of sound from crowds packed four deep on both sides of the avenue.

The Bronx detour at mile 20, across the Willis Avenue Bridge and back, adds a brief excursion before runners enter Central Park for the final miles. The finish line sits in the heart of the park.

The course's elevation profile, with bridge climbs, undulations in Central Park, and the rolling terrain of the Bronx, makes it 3-5 minutes slower than flat courses like Berlin or Chicago. The men's course record of 2:05:06, set by Geoffrey Mutai in 2011, reflects the difficulty. New York has never hosted a marathon world record on the five-borough course.

Sandy, Cancellation, and Comebacks

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy devastated the New York metropolitan area. The marathon, scheduled for November 4, became the subject of an agonizing public debate. Mayor Bloomberg initially insisted the race would go on. Two days before the start, amid public outrage over the city's storm response, the race was cancelled.

The 2012 cancellation was the first in the five-borough era and exposed the tension between the marathon as an economic engine and the marathon as a civic event. When the race returned in 2013, it did so with heightened security and a sense of civic purpose.

Meb Keflezighi's victory at the 2009 NYC Marathon, the first American men's win since 1982, and Shalane Flanagan's 2017 win, the first American women's victory since 1977, both triggered emotional celebrations that transcended the sport. In a city of immigrants and strivers, the marathon has always meant more than running.

The Lebow Legacy

Fred Lebow spent 24 years building the NYC Marathon from a club run into the world's largest and most recognized marathon. At its peak, the race draws 50,000 finishers, two million spectators, and a global television audience. The lottery for entry receives more than 100,000 applications annually.

Lebow's insight was that a marathon could be more than a race. It could be a civic celebration, a charity fundraiser, a television spectacle, and a personal achievement all at once. Every big-city marathon founded after 1976, from London to Tokyo, borrowed from the model he built in New York.

The statue at the entrance to Central Park shows Lebow mid-stride, checking his watch. The pose is perfect for a man who spent his life looking at the clock, trying to make something happen before time ran out. He succeeded. Every first Sunday in November, 50,000 runners cross the Verrazzano and prove it.