From a distance I saw the racer coming, and somehow I knew it was her. She was alone, just as she’d said she’d be, pedaling with her arms, pumping rhythmically–three brisk strokes and a rest, three brisk strokes and a rest–in the manner of a seabird making its way across a vast expanse of water. As she approached, people began to clap and cheer, then cheer louder, realizing at the last moment that it was a woman in this wheelchair. Then she briskly turned a corner and was gone, pulling the applause along behind her.
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The lack of allies to help her cut through the wind made this year’s marathon doubly difficult. The 35,000 entrants began and ended the race running north through Grant Park into a stiff breeze that angled off the lake. Forget the loneliness of the long-distance runner; what about the loneliness of a long-distance wheelchair racer? Yet race Ladner did, and she won her third straight Chicago Marathon in the women’s wheelchair division in 2:04:21, within three minutes of her victorious time last year. I don’t know if Ladner made it into the TV coverage, even at the finish line, but as I watched the leaders go by at the corner of Addison and the Inner Drive I admired her above all others.
Of course, all were admirable, which is why an estimated 1.5 million spectators lined the course, remaining in place and clapping for the runners long after the leaders had passed. Yet there is nothing like the excitement of seeing the leaders. At Addison and the Drive, where the course turned and headed back south, first to come were the official race vehicles, strobe lights flashing, to make sure the course was clear, then the police cars whose sirens sound so cheerful when they wail to herald parades and other processions. Then came the lead men in wheelchairs, with the massive South African Krige Schabort, last year’s winner, cruising like a big blue Olds 98. (The marathoners in chairs get a head start to clear the foot traffic and typically finish about a half hour faster than the top runners.) On this day, however, Krige would be beaten by Ladner’s fellow University of Illinois alum Joshua George, a smaller man who cut through the wind to reclaim the title he’d won twice earlier in the decade, this time against a much stronger field. After Ladner and a few other wheelchair stragglers came a pack of men on foot, most of them Kenyans. Soon after the lead pack came a larger pack, and at the back of it, drafting off the male runners, was women’s leader Constantina Tomescu-Dita, who won the women’s race two years ago and last year lost by five seconds to Deena Kastor.
With its flat, fast course, Chicago fully deserves its spot in the world marathon majors alongside Boston, New York, London, and Berlin. But Cheruiyot’s fall was a civic embarrassment. Yes, this is Chicago, where we keep gats in our pants and lanterns within kicking distance of cows, where signs warn pedestrians to watch for slabs of ice falling from skyscrapers and slippery surfaces drape the finish line of a 26-mile race. Cheruiyot was carried away on a golf cart to the nearest emergency room, and it was left to Njenga to speak at the finish line. After coming in second for the third time, he simply said, “Maybe next year.” The man should be made an honorary citizen of the city and given a lifetime pass to Wrigley Field.
