Race Must Go On, Says Atlanta Olympic Marathon Director

(ATR) The race must go on, say organizers of past and upcoming marathons, on the heels of the horrific bomb blasts in Boston.

The two explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing at least three people and injuring more than 170, have resounded throughout the sports world.

"The best thing to do with an act like this was to go forward and not be imprisoned by fear," Julia Emmons, director of marathons and race walks at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, tells Around the Rings.

"I think you just face it down; that’s what we did."

Emmons and her crew put on the women’s marathon the day after a pipe bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park. The blast killed one woman and injured 111 others. A cameraman also died after suffering a heart attack as he rushed to the site.

The blast occurred about 1:15 a.m. on a Saturday morning. The marathon, with 83 runners and about 1,200 volunteers, was scheduled for Sunday morning.

At a meeting with her crew leaders at noon Saturday, Emmons told them they were "going on and putting on the finest Olympic marathon we could. Nothing was changed." But she also asked them to contact their volunteers.

"I understood that some people might be frightened and wish not to volunteer," Emmons says. "Not a single volunteer said they would not come."

While conceding that "trying to protect 83 women on a totally open course was what was scary," Emmons says she was confident in the Atlanta security arrangements and the race went off without incident.

"I assume that’s going to be the attitude in the running community, not let anybody stop it," Emmons says.

Emmons says that the Boston bombings are "everybody’s worst nightmare. At the back of the mind of any race director of a great race is something like this that completely comes out of left field and destroys all these carefully articulated plans. And there’s not anything you can do to prevent it."

Emmons says that with half a million cups used by runners, trash receptacles – seen as places to hide bombs -- are essential, although sometimes open boxes are used instead of closed bins.

That appears to be case with the Sunday’s London Marathon. The world’s largest 26.2-mile footrace had nearly 37,000 finishers last year.

"We fully expect the London marathon to go ahead on the 21st of April as planned," Nick Bitel, London Marathon chief executive, told the BBC.

He said that in a free society, "one of the joys" of a race like the London Marathon is that it is open to hundreds of thousands of spectators. He cited a marathon in North Korea "where there’s no one watching and no one standing on the side of the street."

Adds Emmons, "I would rather live in a free society and take the risk that things might happen to me."

Reported byKaren Rosen

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