Sports
At the elite level, running a marathon has become a speed event. The world’s fastest time is 2 hours, 3 minutes, 2 seconds. (On average, that’s less than 4 minutes, 42 seconds per mile.) Six men have broken the 2:04 barrier in the past three years alone.
Italian race-car driver Alex Zanardi is well-acquainted with speed. But the two-time CART champion and former Formula-1 driver is too fast for the 2013 New York City marathon. At least that was message he got from race organizers when he said he wanted to defend his 2011 New York City marathon title in the handcycle division. (The 2012 event was canceled due to Superstorm Sandy).
The handcycle is a three-wheeled vehicle with gears, brakes, and a hand-crank that allows athletes to operate the pedals. Since 2007, Zanardi has become one of the top handcyclists in the world. At the 2012 London Paralympics, he won two gold medals (in the time trial and road race). In August, he won both events again at the 2013 UCI Para-Cycling Road World Championships.
The handcycle, he said, “changed my life quite dramatically.”
In 2001, Zanardi lost both of his legs in a near-fatal car crash during a race in Lausitz, Germany. Six years later, he made his marathon debut in New York City and placed fourth after just one month of training.
His exclusion from this year’s handcycle division, Zanardi said, “was something to do with safety. That’s what I was told. In order to keep the race slow, I was told all athletes who had a personal best below one hour, 25 minutes would not be accepted.”
Zanardi’s winning time in 2011 was 1:03:01.
“It was very difficult to understand,” he said. “Normally, very prestigious events have this type of limit,” but they say “if you have a personal best over this time, ‘Sorry, try again next year.’”
So Zanardi decided to shift gears.
On Sunday, Zanardi will line up in the slower wheelchair division – less than a month after receiving his first racing chair.
“It’s a totally different sport,” Zanardi said.
Unlike handcycles, wheelchairs have no gears, so climbing is tougher because athletes must use only their arms to maintain speed. Without gears, technique is also crucial.
At the Paralympics, wheelchair racing is classified as track, while handcyclists compete in cycling.
“Technically, we should not even have handcycles in the race because it’s considered cycling,” said Bob Laufer, the marathon’s coordinator of the wheelchair division and athletes with disabilities.
The reason for holding a bike race in the middle of the New York City Marathon since 1999, Laufer said, is due to the longstanding relationship between the marathon’s organizers (New York Road Runners) and Achilles International. Achilles’ mission is to enable athletes of all disabilities to participate in mainstream athletics, and many of its members find handcycling to be an easier entrée into sports than wheelchairs.
So on Sunday, Zanardi will become a track athlete, even though his longest training ride in a wheelchair so far was 13.1 miles, or half the marathon distance.
“My handicap is double,” he said. “My body is not trained for speed (right now). The second is that I have short arms. If my average stroke per minute, let’s say, is 200. If my arms were an inch longer, I would certainly cover 200 inches of distance more.
“We did something, though,” Zanardi said, leaning in to reveal a clever ploy. “I went to my friends at Campagnolo,” the Italian company that makes bike components, “and they manufactured me a couple of special wheels, smaller than people normally use. That makes it a little better – but still.”
His goals for Sunday are modest.
“I want to finish,” Zanardi said – even if it means ceding the race to Ernst Van Dyk of South Africa, who has won the Boston Marathon a record nine times and won the New York City Marathon once, in 2005.
“I know Ernst very well because he was one of my toughest [cycling] competitors last year and this year,” Zanardi said.
In fact, three of Zanardi’s Paralympic and world championship gold medals came at Van Dyk’s expense. Each time, the South African placed second.
“So for me, even if I finish an hour behind” Van Dyk in the wheelchair division on Sunday, Zanardi said, “it kind of proves what I can do when I do it right.”
The winner of the wheelchair race will win $15,000, but Zanardi may return home to Padua, Italy, empty handed.
“I have a bet with my trainer,” Zanardi said. “The line is 2 hours, 15 minutes. If I go under that time, I win one Euro. If I go over, I have to pay one Euro.”
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