For 20 years, Greg Taylor has trained through the pain of unforgiving Minnesota winters to qualify for the signature road race of his life, the Boston Marathon. The spring ritual was all but sacred to the state welfare worker, who for two decades has never missed a start.
But for the first time next April, there will be no room in the race for Taylor. He qualified easily, but was shut out along with thousands of other qualified runners — by far the largest number of skilled racers excluded from the world’s premier marathon since its birth in 1897.
The 2011 marathon remains open, however, to a multitude of runners too slow to meet the race’s strict qualifying standards: charity fund-raisers, foreign tourists, celebrities, and thousands of others with connections to organizers, sponsors, vendors, licensees, consultants, municipal officials, and marketers peddling entries for profit.
Many of the most deserving marathoners have been denied entry to a race long championed by organizers as a showcase for the best runners. Still welcome are joggers who have run the 26.2-mile course dressed as Elvis, nuns, hamburgers, and cartoon characters.
After 115 years of managing the world-class race, the Boston Athletic Association has hit a wall. READ ON
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