For the first time in its history, The New York City Marathon will be cancelled. Mayor Bloomberg announced this just hours after announcing that the race would go on despite the critics who said that it was too soon after the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.
“The Marathon has been an integral part of New York City’s life for 40 years and is an event tens of thousands of New Yorkers participate in and millions more watch,” said Mayor Bloomberg in a statement Friday evening. “While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division.”
“We would not want a cloud to hang over the race or its participants, and so we have decided to cancel it,” he added. “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.”
A few hours earlier, Bloomberg told a press conference that holding the marathon would be a morale and money boost for the city.
The New York City marathon is the world largest, with tens of thousands of participants. In a typical year, New Yorkers line the route’s 26 miles, turning the city into a giant party.
The race winds through all five boroughs, but it starts in hard-hit Staten Island, parts of which look like a disaster zone.
“The prudent course of action here — postpone the marathon, come back a different day,” Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer told TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie. “Our first priority, let’s help people who lost their homes, who are missing loved ones.”
New York City is still dealing with the carnage that was left after Hurricane Sandy. Those visitors need hotel rooms, but many of them already are occupied by New Yorkers displaced from their homes. Richard Nicotra, who owns the Hilton Garden Inn in Staten Island, has refused to throw out evacuees to honor reservations for marathon runners, according to NY1.
19 of the 41 deaths in the city after the storm were in Staten Island, where the race would’ve began from.
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