For those of us who were disappointed by the delay of this year’s Boston Marathon, Trenni Kusnierek has some tentative good news.
On Tuesday, the NBC Sports Boston reporter called in to Boston Public Radio to discuss the impact of the first-ever postponement of the 123 year-old race.
"It actually may mean a small boon,” she explained. “They've actually gotten a couple of elite athletes who prior were not going to participate because of the Olympics.”
While the Boston Marathon was only postposed five months, Tokyo’s 2020 Summer Olympics won’t take place until July 2021. As a result, 160 runners who were scheduled to compete in Japan will now have some extra time on their hands.
But it’s not just the delay of Tokyo that could drive more runners to run the Boston Marathon. With the race now scheduled for September, it’ll be the first of five World Marathon Majors taking place this fall. With runners having to choose between races, Kusnierek said some may choose to run Boston over, say, Berlin or Chicago, because of its place at the top of the Fall lineup.
"The field is gonna be a little bit thinner probably in all of those races, but Boston being the first one might get some names that they wouldn’t otherwise have gotten because of the timing of the original race in April and its lead-up to the Olympics.”
