Half Marathon Runs for Its Financial Life

More than 5,000 participants are expected to run in Sunday’s America’s Finest City Half Marathon, which itself is running for its life.

The 15-year-old road race lost its title sponsor in April--the second time in as many years that a sponsor has pulled out citing financial strain--and race director Neil Finn said that if a replacement is not found, this will be the final running of the half marathon.

“We’re very concerned,” said Finn, who works for the American Lung Assn., the race’s beneficiary. “If there is no sponsor found, there probably will not be a race next year.”

Finn has scrambled the past four months trying to make do without the $75,000 that the sponsor provided in 1991. Although he has been able to pull off the trick this time, he said the burden on the Lung Assn. has been too heavy to consider carrying into the future.

The half marathon is not the first area road race to feel the recession’s pinch. The San Diego Marathon, run in December, still has not paid its elite runners because of sponsorship deficits. Lynn Flanagan, the marathon’s director, said she has worked out a payment schedule through The Athletics Congress and runners will receive their first installment in September, nine months after the race.

Neither is financial hardship a local phenomenon. The Crescent City Classic, a 10-kilometer race in New Orleans where several world bests have been set, lost its sponsor in 1991. It survived in part because it decided to forgo a prize purse.

Finn has decided to follow that design, eliminating prize money and travel expenses for elite runners. That has caused many of the best distance runners who have entered in the past to stay away this time.

“The field overall is not anywhere near as strong as it has been the last several years,” Finn said. “Most of the time someone calls about the race, and I tell them right off that there is no prize money and that ends the conversation right there.”

Instead of buying prestige, Finn instead will spend money from entry fees and other sources on T-shirts and other favors for the 5,000 so-called recreational runners.

Besides the T-shirts, which cost $27,000, Finn must spend $18,000 on transportation to get the runners from the finish line in Balboa Park, where they arrive beginning at 4:30 a.m., to the the start line at the Cabrillo Monument at the tip of Point Loma. It is one of the few point-to-point races that requires transportation (most races have a common start-finish line).

While Finn must endure some lean times, Bill Burke, assistant race director of the Crescent City Classic, said losing a sponsor need not lead to a race’s demise.

“Absolutely not,” Burke said. “ Absolutely not .”

When the New Orleans race lost its sponsor it had to choose between supplying a prize purse for elite athletes or feeding all the runners a traditional post-race meal of jambalaya, a $20,000 expense.

“We tried to get other sponsors to put up prize money,” Burke said. “But we just couldn’t. So we cut out the prize money.”

That helped the race survive, and before the 1992 running Burke lined up several small businesses as sponsors who supplied $25,000, enough to attract several Kenyans who pushed a quick pace. The winning time, 27 minutes 46 seconds, neared the 10K world best of 27 minutes 22 seconds set at Crescent City in 1984 by Mark Nenow.

Finn is looking for a similar reincarnation in 1993, but he will have to deal with two conditions unique to Southern California: the recession, which has hit harder here than elsewhere in the country, and the number of events vying for the same sponsors.

“We’ve been in a recession for three years now,” said Tim Murphy, who directs two of the area’s most successful races, the Carlsbad 5,000 and the Arturo Barrios 10K in Chula Vista.

Flanagan, meanwhile, said corporate sponsors actually have increased during the past several years, but their money is quickly devoured by competing events.

“The competition for sponsors is very intense,” she said.

It’s not just title sponsors that directors are having difficulty attracting, but also the food and supply vendors that supply goods and services during a race in exchange for conspicuous display of their logos.

“Even getting the sponsors who provide food at the end of the race,” Finn said, “has been tougher this year.”

The half marathon made $1.7 million for the Lung Assn. during its first 14 years, an average of $121,429. Finn said he has not calculated what this year’s earnings will be, but he knows they will be down.

“We can’t go on year after year without the sponsorship money,” he said. “We can survive this year no problem. But the effort, staff time and things like that involved to continue, with what the pay-out would be, is not justified.”

15th AMERICA’S FINEST CITY HALF MARATHON

Course--The race begins at the Cabrillo Monument atop the Point Loma Peninsula and slopes down toward San Diego Bay. After following the shoreline on flat surface streets, the course heads east into downtown on A street. It turns northward and climbs up a steep grade on Sixth Avenue before turning into the park and finishing on Laurel Street.

Time--The race begins at 7 a.m., but all participants must report to the finish line no later than 6 a.m. Buses will leave Balboa Park (beginning at 4:30 a.m.) from two locations: the intersections of Park and Zoo Place and Park and President’s Way. It is best to arrive early. In the past latecomers have been left behind, and no cars are allowed at the start line.

To enter--Final registration will be held today at the Mission Valley Marriott from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Cost is $30. Entries are limited to 6,000 (about 5,400 are expected).

Elite runners--The field is headlined by Jerry Kiernan of Dublin, Ireland. Kiernan won the 1985 AFC Half Marathon with the second-fastest time ever (1:03:15). Bill Donakowski of El Sobrante, who was second in the 1991 San Francisco Marathon, and Adolpho Lopez of Santa Maria, who finished fourth in the 1991 South American Championship Marathon in Manos, Brazil, also will run. A sleeper could be Jose Andres Santiago, a little known runner from Monterrey, Mexico. The top women include: Laura LaMena-Coll of Tempe, Ariz., who won the 1990 AFC Half Marathon in 1:13:00, the third fastest time ever for a woman; Linda Jannell of Redwood City, who won the recent San Francisco Half Marathon in 1:19:27; Laura Stuart of Del Mar, who won the 1992 Chicago Distance Classic, the 1991 La Jolla Half Marathon and the 1990 Coronado Half Marathon; and Mindy Ireland of Escondido, who has recorded five of the nine fastest marathon times in San Diego.