entries. While other races went begging for participants, runners had to prove themselves before they were allowed to pin on a coveted Boston Marathon number. Runners grumbled, but they rose to meet the stern requirements of the prideful race and qualified in record numbers.

Bad Business Dealings

By the mid-1960s, the BAA needed sponsorship to move beyond its cardboard box status. The organization moved slowly and sometimes unwisely in its business dealings. In 1965, Will Cloney confidently and unilaterally made a handshake agreement with the Prudential Life Insurance Company, whose massive 52-story office tower (and then tallest building in Boston) now served as the finish line. In exchange, Prudential agreed not to make any commercial tie-ins with the race and to install toilets and showers in their underground garage as a courtesy to marathon finishers.

In the early 1980s Cloney unilaterally and confidently signed a fundraising contract with Boston lawyer Marshall Medoff, essentially turning the marathon over to him. The contract allowed Medoff to keep any money raised over the sum of $400,000. Medoff immediately set off and raised $712,000. The contract rendered the BAA board powerless. The scandal in the Boston papers was delicious. The courts finally stepped in and undid the BAA’s foolishness, decreeing that the marathon is a public trust and not the sole property of any one person to give away or sell. Cloney resigned as race director, and the BAA board of governors was forced by the court to step in and sort out the mess. But the attitudes, arbitrariness, and inertia of the organization had not changed.

Clinging to the Past

Uta Pippig’s finish at the 1996 Boston Marathon, her most triumphant win in an already distinguished career.

By 1978, the field had swelled to nearly 5,000, and the BAA, with the hubris of an organization that had clung to its traditions, suddenly wanted to cap the field at 5,000 and impose a qualifying time. Runners protested. But the BAA, secure in its perceived power, imposed the limits anyway. As runners looked for alternatives, road-race running went through a renaissance outside of Boston. New York surpassed Boston as a major marathon. Los Angeles and Chicago created marathons on more humanitarian terms. London and Berlin created marathons from scratch. By the 1980s, Boston had lost its power to unilaterally dictate to the running world, and the BAA was being forced to rethink its old ways.

But rethinking comes hard to a prideful institution with a long tradition. It was not until well into the 1980s that the BAA finally began to loosen some of its stranglehold on the marathon. The BAA first introduced qualifying times in 1970. Later, they increased the field limits and loosened qualifying standards. But the BAA’s resistance to other innovations was legendary. Women were not officially allowed to enter until 1972—five years after Kathrine Switzer ran the race with official number in 1967, the event that would lead to today’s Title IX and beyond. The BAA dragged its feet for years before finally computerizing the race in the 1990s when the growth had made it impossible to handle by hand.

Then, in a stunning turnaround that shocked even those close to the race, the BAA made a deal with the John Hancock Financial Services Company in 1989. This sponsorship brought the Boston Marathon into the modern era. Suddenly, the scrappy operation that had been run out of a shoebox by Will Cloney and Jock Semple was now being run by the John Hancock Company with the latest technology. The course was accurately measured for the first time in history. Corrals replaced the mass start. The field grew to accommodate more runners, and the BAA, for the first time in its history, began to actively market and promote its race.

In 1996, when Uta Pippig won the BAA’s pseudo “100th” Boston Marathon, the race had finally evolved into one of the premier athletic events in the world. And ironically, one of the oldest and most tradition-bound marathons in the world is now one of the most progressive and innovative.

That’s the way of the world. The good ideas live on and prosper. And the old ways—when they are too rigid—must eventually give way to the new. Yet the flavor of Boston’s 100 years (make that 99 if you’re being statistical about it) of tradition persists. There is still a sense that special something in the air at Boston that you don’t find at other marathons. There is an aura of history and athletic excellence. Boston will always be Boston, but it will now have the sensibility and the infrastructure to carry that history and athletic excellence forward into the next millennium.

Tom Derderian BOSTON’S PSEUDO “100th” BORNE FREE

BY MICHAEL SANDROCK

“I Never Imagined I Could Fly. I am Home Here.”

UTA PIPPIG, 1996 BOSTON MARATHON CHAMPION

BORNE FREE. What a perfect title for an article about Uta Pippig’s running career. The song “Born Free” was made famous by a motion picture about a lion who was born in captivity and raised by man but who longed to run free in the African wilderness. Uta’s battle to run free is different. Uta was born free in Germany and ran her first races at age six. Her running career has never been caged, yet she has had to overcome tremendous obstacles to remain that way. These obstacles have included a domineering boyfriend-turned-coach, intestinal anguish, and fierce competitors bent on stopping her.

Uta Pippig runs for the pure joy of running and has had enormous success in the marathon. She won the Boston Marathon in 1994 and again in 1996, and she won the Berlin Marathon in 1990, 1992, and 1995. But her most magnificent performance was in the 1996 Boston Marathon, where she overcame an aggressive rival and terrible cramps in the final miles to score, as one writer put it, “a comeback for the ages.”

Uta’s childhood and early running were happy and carefree. Happy runners seldom grow up to be neurotic or disturbed, and through her twenties and early thirties, Uta had all the hallmarks of an emotionally healthy individual. Her sense of humor is quick and biting, and if she is in good company, her laughter is contagious and joyous.

When Uta was seven, her coach Renato Canova influenced her to switch from her original coach to him. Soon Canova became her domineering boyfriend- coach. For years, Canova ran (pun intended) every aspect of her life. He controlled when she ate, when she trained, when she slept, and when she competed. She ran under his iron-fisted control through the early 1990s,

and he became the most prominent figure in her racing success. But living under the control of another human being, even if that person is your coach and loves you, is a form of captivity. After years of fighting against Canova’s control, Uta finally broke free from him in 1994, just before that year’s Boston Marathon.

After the breakup, Uta was no longer under the iron-fisted control of her coach. At first, she felt directionless. But gradually, as she gained confidence in making her own decisions, the directional void was filled by her own inner voice. Her times improved. Her marathon success has gone on an upward trajectory since then. Her win at 1996 Boston was especially significant because it was the strongest statement that she could make: ” I can run free.”

The 1996 Boston marathon represented a new dimension of Uta’s freedom. She was running under her own guidance, making her own decisions. During the race, as she was running in pain and cramping near the end of the race, she made a decision to stay in and fight through the pain. That decision was her own. It was a decision that no coach could have forced her to make. And it was that freedom of decision-making that made her most triumphant win so special to Uta.

Loroupe, the defending champion and previous world-record holder, had established a good early lead, and as the miles accumulated, the gap between them widened to as much as 30 seconds. But at about mile 20, Loroupe began to fade. And Uta, despite terrible cramping in her legs, began to move up on the leader.  Loroupe could sense Uta’s presence and began to surge, trying to shake Uta off and put her away once and for all. But Uta, running in pain, hung on and would not let Loroupe drop her. “I was not going to be dropped. I had to