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Lawyers for the wheelchair athletes asked for a court injunction barring the Road Runners from delaying the disabled racers and from other activities that the racers believe to be discriminatory. But before United States District Court Judge Fredric Block could rule on the request, the Road Runners agreed last month not to ''unreasonably or unlawfully obstruct'' the wheelchair racers this year. They also promised not to deflect news media attention from the wheelchair racers and to let them cross the finish line like everyone else. William A. Brewer, the lead lawyer for the disabled athletes, says that the suit has not been settled and that even if the race organizers live up to their promises, the stipulations do not resolve the heart of the dispute. The athletes maintain that the marathon's organizers not only have a history of bias against wheelchair competitors but have also lagged behind a recent trend in the sport by refusing to create a separate division with prizes for wheelchair racers.
Although marathon officials admit they have resisted creating a separate division, they insist that they have not discriminated against wheelchair athletes. They say that the police and other city officials have decided to hold up the wheelchair athletes for their own safety.Some marathon runners say their safety is sometimes at stake, too. While many are sympathetic to the wheelchair athletes, the runners say the wheelchairs can be a hazard; the wheelchair racers reach speeds of up to 40 miles an hour going downhill, making it difficult for tired runners to scramble out of the way.Robert L. Laufer, the Road Runners Club's general counsel, said the wheelchair athletes' complaints arise from logistical problems unique to New York's marathon, an open event with more than 30,000 participants who cross several bridges and major streets in all five boroughs. More than 140 athletes in wheelchairs are expected to compete Sunday. ''New York is unlike any other marathon with regard to the bridges and the number of streets it crosses,'' Laufer said.
''We do try to accommodate them.''As in most city marathons, the wheelchair athletes start the race half an hour before the first phalanx of elite runners sets off. Unlike in the Boston Marathon and some other events, there is no minimum qualifying time for entrants in New York. Since the world's top wheelchair athletes can complete a marathon in less than 1 hour 40 minutes, they generally reach the finish line before the first runners, who complete the course in just over two hours.But trouble arises when the fastest runners, accompanied by cars carrying reporters and race officials, catch up to the slower wheelchair athletes. That happened last year at the Queensboro Bridge. One lane of the bridge was under construction, leaving only two lanes for runners. Police officers ordered the wheelchair competitors to wait until the top runners had passed.''We stopped them for safety reasons, because the lead vehicles were not far behind them and we feared they would be endangered by overcrowding when the lead vehicles reached the bridge,'' Allan Steinfeld, the president of the Road Runners, said in a recent interview.
Though Steinfeld acknowledged responsibility for the decision, Laufer said that no club officials were present and that the police had made the decision. ''It was certainly not the Road Runners Club that made that decision,'' he said. ''We had no agent at the bridge.'' Steinfeld did not return telephone messages trying to clarify the issue. The question of who makes these decisions is at the center of the lawsuit. The Road Runners say the responsibility is spread among the police and other city officials along the route. But Daniel L. Brown, a lawyer for the disabled athletes, says that the police usually act at the behest of the race organizers.''They stop you during the race and they try to convince you it's for safety reasons, but it's really that they want the foot people to cross first,'' said Bob Neumayer, a wheelchair athlete who has competed in the New York Marathon 13 times. Over the last two decades, wheelchair racing has evolved from an exhibition event, aimed mostly at inspiring disabled people, to a sport in its own right, with specialized equipment, wheelchair athletes say.
Wheelchair divisions have become a fixture in many major marathons worldwide, from Berlin to Los Angeles, complete with prize money and awards. Some elite wheelchair racers, like Franz Nietlispach of Switzerland, have become pros, touring from event to event and getting endorsements from major corporations. Marathons in Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Houston have wheelchair divisions with prizes. Most of these races have found ways to confront the logistical puzzle of lead runners overtaking wheelchair athletes. The solution is usually as simple as in Chicago, where race officials tell wheelchair athletes to keep to the right so the top runners can pass.Some New York race officials said they have resisted creating a wheelchair division for fear that it would lead to additional demands from other disabled groups. It would be difficult to know where to draw the line, the officials said.The feud between the wheelchair athletes and the Road Runners Club goes back to 1978, when Bob Hall, a pioneer of wheelchair racing, sued the club after it denied him a spot in the race because he was disabled.
The State Human Rights Commission agreed with Hall, and he was allowed to compete in the 1978 and 1979 marathons. But the Road Runners appealed through the state courts, until the New York Court of Appeals ruled for the club in 1982; the state's highest court defined the wheelchairs as vehicles and said they could be banned from a footrace. In the end, though, Mayor Edward I. Koch intervened, declaring that unless wheelchair racers were allowed to compete, the city would not allow the marathon on public streets. The Road Runners relented.''You can name other events -- Boston, Berlin, Frankfurt, Atlanta -- each of these cities have included people with disabilities in an equitable program,'' Hall said. ''New York seems to have put aside the disabled in the free-for-all of entries. They don't seem to care and never have seemed to care.''In 1986, Hall said, a police motorcycle pulled in front of him and slowed his progress to a crawl as he was beginning to pass the lead female racers at the eight-mile mark.
Hall did not return to New York until 1995, when race officials decided that high winds made crossing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge too dangerous for wheelchair racers. The officials bused the racers across the bridge after the rest of the runners had started. The buses were not equipped for the disabled, and a wheelchair racer broke a leg while being transported.Alan Brown, a 32-year-old sports marketing agent from Florida who had trained for three years for the marathon, said he was stopped in the 1992 race for 10 minutes by volunteers at the entrance of Central Park to allow the lead foot runner to enter the park alone. Before being halted, Brown had struggled for nearly 10 miles with a broken wrist.Miguel Such, 25, a pro racer from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., finished first among all participants in last year's marathon at 1 hour 47 minutes. He says he was not allowed to cross the finish line in the middle, where a ribbon was reserved for footracers, but was instead shunted off onto a special lane to the right.
''I had to cross the finish line all the way to one side,'' Such said. ''The way they handle the wheelchair division is out of line. It's a slap in the face.''Laufer, the Road Runners Club's lawyer, said that the Achilles Track Club, which oversees the participation of the disabled in the marathon, has done its best to accommodate all handicapped people, including wheelchair racers. He said the organizers have provided special staging areas and recovery areas with accessible toilets. The Achilles Club also gives two honorary awards, but no prize money, to disabled racers who perform exceptionally well.But it is precisely this point that upsets some wheelchair athletes. Some resent being lumped together with blind athletes, amputees, cancer victims, diabetics and people in hand-cranked chairs or electric-powered chairs. They believe their sport has become a legitimate event, on a par with the footrace, and should no longer be treated as a heartwarming sideshow to the runners.The Road Runners see the suit as a wedge to coerce them to do what other cities have done.