For the first time in more than a quarter century, the elite runners in the Chicago Marathon will be on their own.
Sunday’s race will be the first since Carey Pinkowski became race director in 1990 without “rabbits” paid to set a pace calculated to help bring record times.
Last year’s runner-up, Sammy Kitwara of Kenya, is sure that means the 2015 race will be relatively slow, with the emphasis on place rather than time killing any chance for a runner to claim the $75,000 course record bonus.
His countryman, 2012 Boston Marathon champion Wesley Korir, thinks that change in mentality could help combat the urge to use banned performance-enhancing drugs that has scourged the sport, as exemplified by the doping cases of the two women who won five of the last six Bank of America Chicago Marathons.
“This is one step toward curing the problem,” Korir said. “The issue of time, the issue of (trying for) the under two-hour marathon, that is the problem.
“Running 2:03, 2:02, 2:01 is superhuman (the men’s world record is 2:02:57). We are very few super humans who can run those times.
“When you have a kid just starting to race, and their mind is already thinking that to make it as a successful runner, you have to run those times, you are forcing them to go overboard, to do something that is not acceptable.”
A flat course and rabbits have made Chicago a destination for fast times, part of what led Korir here in the past. He is pleased to focus this year on winning Chicago for the first time in seven tries.
The biggest victory of Korir’s career came in rabbit-free Boston. The top U.S. men’s marathoner of the past 35 years, Meb Keflezighi, had his two biggest triumphs (Boston and New York) and most significant performance (2004 Olympic silver medal) in marathons with no pacers.
“Not having a pacer is huge for the sport because that is how we all started, running for medals and victories in league, district, NCAA, nationals, major marathons, Olympic trials and Olympics,” Keflezighi said in an email. “All involve tactics, strategy and ferocious competition with one another instead of the clock. Decades later, that is what people will remember, not the time.”
Pinkowski’s motivation for eliminating the rabbits was just that.
There were no pacers in all of Joan Benoit Samuelson’s five major victories, including the 1984 Olympics. In the 1985 Chicago Marathon, the competition was so fierce it drove her to win in a time that lasted 18 years as the U.S. record.
“If running is pure sport, it should be pure sport in every area,” Samuelson said.
The women in Sunday’s race still can latch onto a man running a certain pace, but it will be an unofficial arrangement.
Deena Kastor, 2004 Olympic bronze medalist and 2005 Chicago winner, set the current U.S. record with a pacer at the 2006 London Marathon. She felt the rabbit was more valuable for company than pace because he was not wearing a watch, leaving Kastor to check planned splits written on her arm against her watch.
“If you are used to training with other people, there is a comfort in having camaraderie,” Kastor said. “That’s the psychological advantage of having pacers with you.”
Kastor also noted a group of pacers is a disadvantage from a TV standpoint. Viewers see them leading nearly all the way, yet none expects to finish.
There are exceptions. Kenya’s Ben Kimondiu went from designated rabbit to winner of the 2001 Chicago Marathon.
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