NYC Marathon canceled amid criticism

NEW YORK — The New York City Marathon will not be run Sunday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office announced late Friday afternoon.

It's the first cancellation in the race's 42-year history.

Earlier, Bloomberg defended his decision to go ahead with the 26.2-mile run, saying it would give the storm-ravaged city "something to cheer about." Critics argued that the race would take resources away from recovery efforts and that it was insensitive to New Yorkers hit hard by Hurricane Sandy.

"While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division," Bloomberg and Mary Wittenberg, the president of the New York Road Runners, said in a joint statement.

"The marathon has always brought our city together and inspired us with stories of courage and determination. We would not want a cloud to hang over the race or its participants, and so we have decided to cancel it. We cannot allow a controversy over an athletic event – even one as meaningful as this – to distract attention away from all the critically important work that is being done to recover from the storm and get our city back on track."

The statement concluded by saying the Road Runners would have additional information "in the days ahead for participants."

Wittenberg said registered runners would be guaranteed a slot in next year's race or in the 2013 NYC Half Marathon, which will be run March 17, WABC reports.

More than 47,000 people signed up for this year's race, although organizers had estimated that about 8,000 of 30,000 out-of-towers would not show.

At a hastily called evening news conference, an emotional Wittenberg said she and other marathon officials had felt that dedicating the race to New York City's recovery would help hurricane victims.

But, amid mounting criticism of the decision to hold the race while emergency storm efforts continue, she said it was "with incredibly heavy hearts" that organizers concluded the best way to help the city was to cancel the race.

At the briefing, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson said the race had become "divisive and controversial" and "a distraction" to storm-relief efforts.

Canceling it, he said, was "a difficult decision, it was a painful decision," but it was the right decision.

"If it's not unifying, it is not the marathon," he said, describing the race as "one of the very best days in the life of the city .. a moment of unity and happiness and joy and a celebration."

Addressing those struggling to cope with the hurricane's destruction, Wolfson said, "We will bring comfort and relief to people who are suffering. We will rebuild our city, we will rebuild it better than it ever was."

Critics — including lawmakers — had slammed Bloomberg's earlier decision to hold the marathon as "idiotic," insensitive and a diversion of city resources at a time when New Yorkers have lost power, their homes and their loved ones.

Thousands of runners joined online appeals to boycott the event or volunteer instead on Sunday to help stricken families.

"Score one for sanity. Let's continue to focus on rescue, relief, repair efforts," tweeted New York State Sen. Liz Krueger, who represents Manhattan's East Side, minutes after the cancellation was announced.

The decision represents a highly public defeat for Bloomberg, who in controversies past has vigorously resisted being pressured into changing his position.

The scrappy New York Post took the mayor to task with its front page headlined "Abuse of Power." It pictured large generators supplying power to the marathon's administrative tent in Central Park.

"Those generators could power 400 homes on Staten Island or the Rockaways or any storm-racked neighborhood in the city certain to be suffering the after-affects of Hurricane Sandy on Sunday morning," the Post thundered in a Friday editorial. "Shouldn't they come first? Shouldn't the race just be canceled? Damned straight."

At a Friday morning briefing, Bloomberg had tried to deflect the mounting criticism by saying the expanded restoration of mass transit and projected return of electrical power to most of Manhattan by Friday night would free up many police officers and other city personnel.

The city resources required by the marathon, he said, were not resources that would make a difference in storm recovery efforts. "If I thought it would take resources away" from emergency work, "we would not do that," he said.

The mayor noted that Rudy Giuliani, his predecessor who had staged the annual race only weeks after the 9/11 attacks, supported his decision as a way to demonstrate solidarity among New Yorkers.

The marathon, Bloomberg told reporters, would "give people something to cheer about in a week that's been pretty dismal."

"You can grieve, you can laugh, you can cry, all at the same time," the mayor said Friday morning.

He also said the race would pump much-needed money into the city's storm-battered economy.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: A confounding and unseemly decision

STATEN ISLAND:Help was slow in coming

Wittenberg, whose New York Road Runners operates the event, also tried to fend off criticism by saying the run would involve more private contractors than in past years to ease the strain on city services.

The marathon, which began in sta1970, brings an estimated $340 million into the city. Race organizers said some of the money would have been used for recovery efforts.

New York Road Runners said that it had planned to donate $1 million to the recovery fund and that more than $1.5 million in pledges already had been secured from sponsors.

Bloomberg's critics, however, were blunt.

Councilman James Oddo, from the devastated borough of Staten Island, where the race will begin, lashed out at the mayor on his Twitter feed:

If they take one first responder from Staten Island to cover this marathon I will scream. We have people with no homes and no hope right now

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer weighed in, saying that the city was trying to recover from the blow by Sandy and that now was not the time to hold a marathon.

He said in a statement that New Yorkers throughout the city were "struggling to keep body and soul together, deprived of basic essentials as temperatures drops." The race should be rescheduled "in order to focus all of the city's resources on the crucial task of helping our neighbors recover from this disaster."

"New Yorkers deserve nothing less than to know that the entire government is focused solely on returning the city and their region back to normalcy," Stringer said.

State Sen. Andrew Lanza, however, would have none of it, noting that Staten Island -- the marathon's starting line -- was still staggering from the storm and should not have city resources diverted elsewhere.

"This is an example of what infuriates us," Lanza told The Daily News. "We have people still in water, families displaced, people wondering where their grandparents are."

Runners also spoke out.

Penny Krakoff, a runner from Brooklyn, changed her marathon plans. She intended to catch an official bus to Staten Island but spurn the race in favor of volunteering in the stricken area.

"Let's not waste resources and attention on a foot race," she told Gothamist. "Who is with me?"

Other runners turned to Facebook, on such pages as NYC 2012 Marathon of Relief, to redirect marathoners toward volunteer work on Sunday.

An online petition circulating via Twitter had collected more than 20,000 signatures by Friday afternoon from runners and others who wanted to see the race postponed, Malia Rulon Herman, of the Gannett Washington Bureau, reported.

"It is not the right time," wrote Danielle Visvader-Pradas of New York. "People lost their homes. People are still without electricity and heat. This city should not have the streets filled with cheering when so many have lost so much."

But Anne-Marie Auwinger, who lives in Lower Manhattan and has been without power since Monday, said it was important to hold the race -- her first marathon.

"Everything can't just stop because this happened," she said. "We have to try to make things as normal as we can."

James Brennan, a Rockaway Beach native whose relatives lost their homes to the devastating storm, said he always had immense respect for Bloomberg as a businessman and government leader -- until the decision to stage this year's marathon.

"I think this is the biggest mistake he's made, not only in his mayoral career, but in his entire life," said Brennan, a California entrepreneur who said he has raised roughly $500,000 to fund relief and recovery efforts in his boyhood neighborhood and fire-devastated Breezy Point in Queens.

"I understand the importance of showing that New York City is back up and running, but this is flat wrong," he said Friday, a day after flying to New York City and bringing relief supplies to the Rockaway oceanfront area. "These people are soaking wet, freezing, no homes, and the city's holding a marathon. That's just wrong."

Although the blue-and-orange finish line was already in place in Central Park, which was spared the worst of Sandy's wrath, the logistics of pulling off the marathon were staggering.

Just getting tens of thousands of runners to Staten Island -- where homes were leveled by flooding and 470,000 residents were without power -- would have proved difficult. Although ferry service resumed Friday, organizers had planned to bus runners from Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and New Jersey to the starting line.

Hotels in Midtown were already struggling to accommodate stranded commuters, guests moved from electricity-starved Lower Manhattan and tourists unable to get flights home.

On Staten Island, Richard Nicotra, owner of a Hilton Garden Inn, refused to kick out his current guests, who lost their homes to Hurricane Sandy, in favor of runners arriving for the marathon, USA TODAY's Barbara Delollis reported.

At first, the hotel told guests that they would have to leave by Thursday, because they were sold out with marathon runners. But on Thursday morning, he said, the guests "were begging me and crying saying, 'You can't throw me out. I have no place to go.' "

He said he worked out arrangements with the New York Road Runners, which had a contract for rooms, to set up temporary housing in the hotel ballroom to accommodate the runners.

With the cancellation, runners were being urged to donate their rooms to displaced New Yorkers.

Some "disenfranchised" die-hards said they still plan to run, Gothamist reports.