Why did organisers leave it so late to cancel the New York Marathon?

IF I was a marathon runner due to compete in this weekend's New York Marathon then I would be mightily cheesed off with the organisers this morning.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced yesterday that after the devastation of the super storm Sandy, Sunday's running spectacle featuring more than 47,000 runners would be cancelled.

Ultimately, it is no surprise, not after the cyclone ravaged the Eastern seaboard, causing 96 deaths, 40 of them in New York. While across the US East coast, around 3.5 million homes and businesses still have electricity some four days after the terrifying storm

However, in the immediate aftermatch of the storm, Mayor Bloomberg declared that  the marathon would go ahead to give people something to cheer about. That gave the green light to the tens of thousands of runners and their supporters, many of them from the UK who had booked up flights and hotels, to make the trip to the Big Apple.

Fair enough if Mayor Bloomberg had declared the race was cancelled straight away, but to do so less than 48 hours beforehand, when many of the runners had arrived and much of the infrastructure set up, is poor. It is bad management. You could also argue that even a week ago, when the eastern seaboard was battening down the hatches ahead of this Frankenstorm, that the marathon would be in extreme doubt.

Of course the moral argument is lost. You are defending the indefensible to suggest anything but the race should be cancelled. The decision will have been welcomed by most since the race itself was due to start on Staten Island, which took the full brunt of the storm in which 19 people died.

Politician Michael Grimm, whose district covers the island, said: "We're still pulling bodies out of the water and the mayor is worried about marathon runners and returning to life as normal."

So why wasn't the clal made early? In backtracking, the Mayor said: "We would not want a cloud to hang over the race or its participants, and so we have decided to cancel it.

"It is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division. We cannot allow a controversy over an athletic event - even one as meaningful as this - to distract attention away from all the critically important work that is being done to recover from the storm and get our city back on track."

So now food, blankets, portable toilets, generators and other items originally intended for the race are being donated by the organisers to storm-hit areas of the city.

I've never entertained the thought of running the New York Marathon. Friends who have run it have complained how the early morning wait on Staten Island after being bused out from the Manhatten hotels is long and cold and from a scenery point of view the race route is extremely dull. Compared to the London Marathon which apparently has far better support across the length of the route, the Big Apple is the poorer cousin.

If you want to run a fast and scenic US marathon then go to Boston instead. The race atmosphere is pretty good too. I've run around Boston down by the river on a couple of occasions and the city is beautiful.

I feel enormously sorry for the UK runners who will have arrived on Thursday as part of the not too cheap travel packages, having trained hard for the past four or five months, primed to run, only to discover on the eve of the race that it was off.

What an anti-climax. In the grand scheme of things, it's small beer compared to those who have lost their homes and even loved ones. Had Mayor Bloomberg made the call earlier in the week, those trips could have been avoided, and some costs skipped too.
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