Duel in the sun

April 17, 2015 8:22 AM

In 1982, they battled stride for stride for more than two hours in the most thrilling Boston marathon ever run. Then the drama really began.
posted by bq (3 comments total)

Monday, April 19, Patriot's Day, broke warm and blue over Boston,

I must have seen this race, because we had the day off from school and we always went to watch the marathon for at least a little while. But I don't remember this one over and above any of the others, though I recall the hoopla afterwards. As a spectator in that era before things like pocket-sized computers, we didn't really have a way to see the big picture - we just saw the runners as they went by, with no sense of what had come before.
posted by rtha at 8:32 AM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

I guess I was 12 or 13 when that happened. I remember Salazar winning, mostly since he was a local guy from the next town over. I don't remember Beardsley though. As rtha said, we didn't have smart phones and the internet back then so for non-runners very little was known about the people who would be running by you. Unless it was Bill Rogers, of course. Everyone knew who he was by then. Then the winner would be featured on the news afterwards and only then would you learn a little bit about them.
posted by bondcliff at 8:56 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Somewhere the Journalism Gods are weeping. And the sportswriters are throwing old cigar butts and empty whiskey bottles at them. The Gods thunder, "we gave you the thesaurus so you could have different words for 'win' and you picked 'did not lose'??"
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:21 AM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]