About Burke: Founder of the American Health Care Delivery Corporation and a former executive in a gold and mining industry company, he created the famous Los Angeles Marathon. When Devine Racing bought the rights to the Las Vegas Marathon (renaming it the New Las Vegas Marathon) in 2004, he was installed as race CEO.
About Kelly: Reed-thin, with a lion's mane of salt-and-pepper hair and a voice right out of Masterpiece Theatre, he is regal in a swashbuckling way. He's in his fifth year as president of the Las Vegas Track Club. As part of the marathon, Kelly also oversees the Las Vegas Roadrunners, which runs a 28-week training program for aspiring marathoners.
The trio chatted about the history and evolution of this city's marathon.
Freedman recalls the early days: "The Las Vegas Sun founded the marathon in 1967 and promoted the marathon well. There were five of us who formed the Las Vegas Track Club in 1969, and we incorporated the event. When we took it over from them, it was very difficult. We did the marathon differently than the Sun. They used to run it comparable to the Boston Marathon. The Boston starts at noon and theirs started late. When we took over, we figured you can't do that in Las Vegas. The race was in January and you could get a lot of heat and people could get dehydrated quickly."
To plug the track club and lure racers, Freedman started a comical newsletter that once got plugged in Runner's World. The race route changed periodically: Fremont Street to Henderson in even-numbered years; vice versa in odd-numbered years. Another route snaked along on the old Los Angeles Highway, beginning in Jean and ending at Sunset Park.
A frequent visitor since the mid-'60s, Burke, who served as tennis commissioner for the 1984 Summer Olympics in LA, figured Vegas was ready for a world-class race: "[This] was a city and not just the Strip, [and] there was a running culture here, although smaller than Southern California."
Burke had tried to take over the Las Vegas Marathon in 1993. Eleven years later, as race chief, he moved the marathon to December. His chief concern wasn't alienating runners and supporters (who were used to a January event) but whether he could find enough volunteers. The city responded well. Volunteers flooded in for last year's race, the first run under the New Las Vegas Marathon moniker. Runners, too—11,384 to be exact, breaking the LA Marathon's record of 10,364 for a first-year marathon.
"For the runners, it was a thrill of a lifetime. For me, to ride down the Strip in a pace car with not a soul in sight was surrealistic."
INFO BOX |
What: The New Las Vegas Marathon (26.2 mile race and a separate, 13-mile half-marathon When: Sunday, December 10, 6 a.m. Where: Course starts and finishes at Mandalay Bay. The first 5.5 miles are on the Strip, then the course travels directly through the Fremont Street Experience. The loop course goes through Las Vegas and Clark County. Along the course, runners will experience entertainment centers with musical groups performing. Also on the course are 24 water stations and 13 Gatorade replacement fluids stations Participants: More than 16,000 registered. Expected number of spectators: 250,000 along the course. |
And overcoming casino resistance was easier than Burke thought: "I'm still not sure how we pulled that [getting the race on the Strip] off. Last year, some of our biggest casino detractors realized we weren't a flash in the pan and that marathon runners do gamble, do eat and do spend. People had this image of runners as skinny tightwads. They're anything but that. When you start bringing 11,000 participants to the Strip, and those participants bring an average of 2.3 people, you have almost 30,000 people. Then hotel operators say, wait a minute."
But not everything with the race went smoothly, says Kelly: "There was a blunder with the toilets [not enough of them]. There was a miscommunication about how many we'd needed. And runners who'd been hydrating themselves in preparation for the marathon had to make some very difficult decisions. Unfortunately, some runners used the bathroom in people's yards. All big-city marathons have had these problems. But we've addressed this issue, and it won't be a problem this year."
The main problem with those first few marathons, Freedman notes, was attracting runners: "We got about 100 to 200 people to participate. It was a decent turnout considering we really didn't have a population base to choose from [about 64,000 in 1967]. I quit at 22 12 miles [of the 26.2 miles] of the Las Vegas Marathon, my first marathon. It was January 27, 1968. I didn't finish because there was a hailstorm and windstorm. It was just awful. The winner had to go to the doctor to get the sand out of his eyes."
(Over the years, Freedman atoned for quitting by running in 38 marathons, including the Boston Marathon seven times; the Chicago Marathon, where he finished third in the 45-49 age group in 1977; and several 40-and-over world-championship contests.)
Nor were early results from Burke's LA Marathon all that promising: "We had a lot of runners, but the first year and second year we lost money. The third year we made a little money. I was able to breathe a little easier, but not much. Today, we're doing fine. It's now the world's third-largest marathon."
At only 2 years old, the New Las Vegas Marathon is nipping at the heels of its better-known competition: There'll be tons more entertainment this year, Kelly says: mariachi bands, gospel singers, an Xbox lounge, deaf people signing to patriotic music, the world's largest collection of running Elvi. And marriages! Couples wanting to get married after the race can tie the knot at the Run Through Chapel at the fifth mile.
"We got applications from all 50 states [this year], from all U.S. territories, from 40 countries and from all continents except Antarctica. I guess penguins don't run marathons. Vegas is already competing with Amsterdam, London, Boston and Berlin as the premier destination races in the world. In a few years, it will be the largest destination race in the world. None of those cities has the appeal we have. Vegas has cachet all over the planet."
Burke's eyeing an even bigger prize: "More than 16,000 are expected for this year's race. If we can manage 50 percent growth for next year, we'll be near 25,000. I want to make this one of the city's top 10 events. This won't just be the largest destination marathon in the world; it'll be the largest marathon in the world, period."