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September 18, 2008
Dodgers Owner to Take Over LA Marathon
Photo by kristi.nicole via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr
If baseball was not enough, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt has bought the rights to the Los Angeles Marathon through a company called Going The Distance. While the race route will not be changed this year, the race date will be changed from March 1 (as it is currently listed on their website) to February 16 on President's Day.
Current race owner Devine Racing hit a financial difficulty and owed the city around a half million dollars. Yesterday, a city council committee approved McCourt's takeover that includes him paying the money owed to the city. The full City Council, with members enthusiastic that McCourt will bring back the race from its dwindling state, is expected to approve the deal on Friday
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What's up with the date change? President's Day? You've gotta be kidding me. I had a ton of folks that used to come to town to run with me. But I don't even have President's Day off. Who does? This is stupid. Wreaks of some back room political deal.
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You dont need to be a Dodger fan (or maybe you do) to know that Frank McCourt is a meddling fuck up. You have seen what he has done to the Dodgers and Dodger Stadium (less fan friendly, over pricing, greed, destruction of history) to know that this is only one of MANY changes, BAD changes that will come about for the LA Marathon. Good luck folks...
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Running a marathon on a Monday? Is this guy smoking crack? I'm training for this race and it'll be my first marathon ever. It's hard enough to get up and do anything on a Monday, let alone running 26.2! He sucks.
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Okay, so checked around and it appears the deal is that it's all about politics. (Surprise, surprise!) Councilman Bernie Parks (ex-chief cop) is running for the County Supervisor seat that's being vacated by Yvonne Burke. He's the one who pushed through the date change to appeal to the churches that have been complaining about their congregation having a hard time getting to church on a Sunday. So, he's ruining it for the rest of us to get votes from the faith-based community.
Sundays are the industry standard for marathons in the US. The only one that's not run on Sunday is Boston, but it's got a 100+ year legacy and the city created the Patriot's Day holiday around it. The entire place shuts down. That ain't gonna happen in LA on President's Day. The impact is going to be a HUGE reduction in participation, especially for out of town folks.
I don't get why churches are making such a big deal. It's ONE Sunday. There are 51 others. Why can't they be a part of it? I hear that's what they do in Chicago, which is apparently the biggest marathon in the country.
So, LA continues our trudge toward mediocrity. Yay.
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I can't even believe the date change is being implemented with the next scheduled event. I could understand doing something like this beginning in 2010, but five months from now?
And sorry, but while President's Day may be a national holiday a lot of people still have to work it and so there are going to be a helluva lot more commuters negatively impacted/pissed off that Monday than would be on any Sunday.
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Will makes a great point. I wonder what kind of impact there will be on traffic that day compared to a Sunday. And I wonder what the business community is going to say...?
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They really know how to *uck up what was a great race. The folks at Honda must be pissed as the sponsor. First the political pressure to change the course, point-to-point, was done with no runner input, and those that heard about it protested loudly.. to no avail. So we ended up with a course they described as "mostly downhill".. forgetting to tell runners about the long uphill start and steep downhill following that would kill their legs... Times are WAY off, even the pros. More non-finishers and less meeting their time goals. NOW changing to Monday? Got to be kidding, so GOVERNMENT might be off work Monday, but I wont. Sorry LA Marathon, count me and a few thousand others out until you revive the 2006 course and go back to Sunday.