Halloween ushers us past October and into the first Sunday in November, when the Marathon par excellence reigns supreme. From Staten Island to Central Park, it passes through all five boroughs of the beloved city. So many stories shared with Alberto Salazar, Orlando Pizzolato, Gianni Poli, the brother of the Presidents, and Rocky, who is about to become (albeit fleetingly) Brigitte Nielsen's husband. But above all and everyone else, there is the memory of Fred Lebow...
---
October ushers in Halloween, and in some ways the macabre, on the night between the 31st and All Saints' Day. In Italy, it's All Saints' Eve, November 1st, while in Anglo-Saxon and non-Catholic countries, it's a sort of celebration of the supernatural. The dead are remembered on November 2nd, and emotions are captured in the New York Marathon, which began in September in 1970 but has long been held on the first Sunday in November. In 2025, it falls on November 2nd, a condensed series of emotions that are difficult to categorize and separate.
Here we are. Halloween is just around the corner, heralded universally by pumpkins being hollowed out and lit with wax candles. And just beyond, the vibes of the marathon par excellence await us: the New York City Marathon.
New York aside; Boston boasts the oldest and most cultured marathon in sport, albeit controversial, and is "chased" in the catalog of the most prestigious Majors by Berlin, Tokyo, Chicago, Sydney, and London, which reigns supreme in the Old Continent. Rome flies the flag of its own history. Milan thrives on "speed," but is far from the Majors, and we say this with a certain regret as an old supervisor, because at a certain point I found the Milanese "City" in the basket of events to be freed from mediocrity, along with the Giro d'Italia, Milan-Sanremo, Giro di Lombardia, Italian Beach Volleyball, etc., etc.
But the New York Marathon is "The"... New York Marathon. The epitome. No ifs, ands, or buts.
As a journalist specializing in cycling, my racing season ended around the third Saturday in October with the fascinating Giro di Lombardia of the fallen leaves. The third Sunday was dedicated to "closing" with assessments and planning for the coming weeks based on the assignments I had developed over time and which were then considered contingent. And on the third Monday... off to Malpensa, bound for Kennedy Airport in New York or Newark, New Jersey. Whether it was an Alitalia, United, American, PanAm, or People, it made no difference. The most important thing was to leave the two wheels behind, all that was needed.
In New York, we were usually expected by Fred Mengoni, the "inventor" of Greg LeMond and Steve Bauer. An immigrant from Osimo (Ancona), he was a smuggled ocarina salesman, a dishwasher assistant, and a US construction entrepreneur (from Manhattan to Long Island, from New York to Miami, to Seattle) and a stock market gambler with mixed fortunes. In short, a figure who spanned the entire United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In his "homeland," that is, in his native Osimo and nearby Recanati, he had made a name for himself for his sometimes bizarre ventures and even as the owner of motorcycle racing stables and amateur cycling teams. In the world of bicycles, he had also set his sights (and polished them thoroughly) on the properties of the Bayard-Clément family (tires, tires, and tubulars), Made in France and well-known on Lake Maggiore for its majestic villas and intriguing cottages.
In the early 1980s, we introduced Fred Mengoni to the “other” Fred, namely Fred Lebow, who was born Fred Lebowitz on June 3, 1932 in Arad, Romania, who miraculously escaped the Holocaust and who in the “States” had found a special dimension that would deliver him to the Hall of Fame of world athletics as a protagonist of endurance races and not only as the founder of the New York Marathon together with Vincent Chiappetta (strangely ended up in oblivion despite having also been the first president of the organizing club and the first race director of the race around Central Park, which later became a monument to the Majors).
The two Freds were two special types. The Italian had been born nine years earlier in the Marche region. The other came from Romania. The first loved two wheels. The other ran the legendary 42,195-kilometer Marathon-Athens race of the mythological Pheidippides (which is annually commemorated with the "Autentica" in Athens, almost always a week after the New York event).
This time we focus on the "other" Fred. That is, Lebow, whom we had the opportunity to meet and spend time with. The traditional meeting was for a light lunch on the Thursday before the challenge. The meeting point was Manhattan, of course. He was always in a hurry. But he always found an hour or so to have lunch with the journalists. He'd quickly talk about records achieved and new goals to pursue. Then, in the evening, he'd perhaps leave us for dinner just steps from the Rockefeller Center at the Umbrian Ellesse, which in 1984 – for example – was sponsoring the event with glamorous spokespeople like Brigitte Nielsen, Sylvester Stallone's fleeting wife (three summers and goodbye!) a year later. Brigitte dominated the scene with her blonde curls and everything else she looked like. He, Sylvester, seemed to have ended up there by chance and spoke more about his passions as a writer and painter, his Apulian origins (grandfather Silvestro was from Pulcheria Nicastri), his father who was a barber, and so on, but not about the Rocky saga or what was going on in his head about Rambo, which was already in the making.
We'll write about Mengoni another time. On the occasion of the Marathon par excellence, we're focusing on Lebow because his story should be taught in schools, or even a Netflix series, going a little beyond the documentary "Run for Your Life" that was dedicated to him.
Born in Romania, it was said. Escaped the Holocaust. Sad eyes. Reddish hair and beard. Downturned eyebrows. Yellow cycling cap with "John Hancock" written on it, who could have been anyone: the American football coach? The two-time Cap-winning rugby player? We never asked him, so we'll (maybe) never know. We'll investigate. We'll investigate.
Well, the British would say. Lebow talks about himself in his autobiographical book, "Inside the World of the Big-Time Marathoning," which is a read-it-all. The fact is that Vincent Chiappetta invented the race around Central Park, which became the most participated marathon in the world. It was launched on the first Sunday in September 1970. There were 127 starters. Gary Muhurcke won in 2:31:38. Chiappetta was the race director. Lebow... ran and placed 45th out of 55 finishers among a hundred or so spectators. The only woman at the "start!" didn't finish. And so it went on until 1975 with ever-increasing numbers. And in the sixth edition, the route changed and became the "classic" one thanks to the active collaboration and insights of Ted Corbitt (who scouted roads and cycling opportunities), Paul Milvy, Kurt Steiner, Henry Murphy, and Joe Kleinerman.
The "classic" is, in fact, the route we've been using since the mid-1970s: it begins in Staten Island, at the foot of the Verrazano Bridge, and passes through all five boroughs of New York City, ending in Central Park, at the top of the famous and cosmopolitan Fourth Avenue. Every stretch of asphalt exudes a special feeling, one that Italians have always cherished, ever since the days of its inescapable attraction for immigrants, especially from the South, who arrived in New Amsterdam by ship. This is one of the keys to understanding the universal appeal of the Marathon par excellence, which once saw ambitious participants purchase airfare and hotel accommodations from tour operators with a "free" bib, and now it's practically the opposite: you earn the participation time and the rest follows suit. Growth has been exponential, and so has the attraction for our compatriots. So much so that – just to dust off a fairly fresh memory – when the Event was canceled in 2020 due to Covid-19, three thousand Italians were left stranded!
Some numbers: every year, applications exceed 100.000. Registrations are limited each year. The record number of finishers dates back to 2018, when 52.813 reached the finish line, including 30.658 men and 22.155 women out of an extraordinary number of starters (53.315). Throughout its history, "active" registrations have been estimated at more than 800.000.
One could talk about records, the openness to disabled people, the inclusiveness of the organization, the sustainability of the assistance means, the extraordinary effort of the police force, the only cancellation due to fear of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 before the aforementioned one in 2020 due to the dramatic repercussions of the pandemic.
The undersigned, however, would like to recall four particular moments:
- 1981: Alberto Salazar, in the midst of an extraordinary hat-trick, closes the race with a record of 2h0813” and given the unfavorable time zone (+ 6 hours compared to Italy) the eclectic Gian Paolo Ormezzano hastily dictates his article to the Turin diaphonists from a telephone in the press center at the Sheraton Hotel on Seventh Avenue without realizing that it is… a real record (only to later correct himself);
- 1985: Orlando Pizzolato scores an encore and goes from being Pizzo-What? – as onlookers wondered in front of this new phenomenon from Italy – to a much more resounding headline in the Gazzetta “Pizzolato, New York-New York” echoing the famous song by Barbra Streisand;
- 1986: Gianni Poli arrives from Brescia under the guidance of the super-expert Dr. Gabriele Rosa, who then frees the Kenyans by becoming the guru of the athletes of that corner of Africa and ends up – Poli – in a Manhattan restaurant having his photograph taken with Ted Kennedy, brother of John Fitzgerald and Robert of the dynasty of Presidents who fell in love with Jacqueline before being carried off by the most tragic fate;
- 1992: when, having just turned 60 and diagnosed with cancer two years earlier, Fred Lebow completed the last of his 89 career marathons in Central Park and peacefully passed away in 1994. There is a statue there that commemorates him and which was unveiled during a ceremony so well attended (over three thousand people are said to have attended) that it was compared to that of John Lennon, who was murdered nearby.
If we ever return to New York, we'll visit the Italian Fred at the first opportunity, and then the "other" Fred, who rests in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens. We owe it to both of them.
Now let's put Halloween behind us and think about the Marathon. It's time for an idea to become magic.
Leave a comment (0)