L.A. Marathon Refuses to Run From Riot Images : Symbols: Inner-city route is retained. After a dogged marketing campaign, 20,000 competitors are expected.

The City of Los Angeles Marathon has always been less a race than a symbol, a tenuous living thread running through communities otherwise worlds apart. It moves past mariachi singers and gospel choruses, through cheering crowds in Chinatown and Hollywood, past the stately homes of Hancock Park, and past the black and Korean storefronts of the inner city.

But last spring’s riots held a torch to common threads. To a reeling, nervous city, cultural diversity no longer seemed a trait worth celebrating. Running through the streets? That was the proclivity of looters and thugs, not athletes.

“We wondered . . . if there would be an L.A. Marathon in 1993,” said race President William A. Burke.

That the event has survived intact, with a full field of 20,000 entrants expected on Sunday, is largely the result of a dogged, straightforward marketing campaign by the marathon’s private organizers. Faced with image problems almost unprecedented among major sporting events, officials at Los Angeles Marathon Inc. decided to confront the city’s strife and embattled reputation by maintaining the traditional route through the inner city. They also frankly acknowledged the riots in national ads aimed at drawing runners from other states and took pains, when necessary, to reassure runners that they would be safe here.

Together with other promotional efforts, the tactics have attracted a striking cross-section of runners, some more eager than ever to hail the diversity of Los Angeles, others competing here despite strong fears and preconceptions about the city.

“We’re frightened,” admitted Marilu Semph, 35, of Beaverton, Ore., who was planning to drive into town with her husband and two young sons, provided nothing ominous happens during the federal civil rights trial in the Rodney King case. That trial got under way in Los Angeles in February, just in time to put a new chill on race entries.

“We’re watching the news day by day and (we) figure the trial won’t end by race day,” Semph concluded warily. “(But) if anything happens before then, we’ll cancel.”

Out-of-state runners, who form a significant share of the marathon field, often know of Los Angeles mainly what they see on television or hear from friends. For many, the riots remain an indelible image: a TV-screen horror that comes to mind any time someone talks of going to Los Angeles.

“That’s the first thing (people) bring up. . . . ‘Oh, boy, you’re going to run through the riot area,’ ” said Bill J. Pasek, 50, a bank president from Kansas City, Mo., who is planning to run in his first Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday. Friends have been inquiring about the risks ever since he made up his mind to enter more than two months ago.

“That’s usually the only thing that’s discussed,” Pasek said. “It’s always tied to the Rodney King (case) and the riots.”

Two of his friends who took part in the marathon last year decided they would not make a return trip, in part because of the riots and continuing gang violence, Pasek added. One, Carolyn DeFonso, rarely runs in the same city two years in a row anyway. But the huge crowds in Los Angeles and her fears after the riots clinched the decision to stay far away, she said.

“I think the race directors have their hands full this year and I know they must be worried about that,” DeFonso, a 56-year-old microcomputer specialist, said. “If you’re a back-of-the-pack runner like I am, you’re pretty much separated from the main body of people (in the race), and you’re very vulnerable out there.

“From what I’ve heard on the news, things are very unsettled” in Los Angeles.

Among race organizers, such attitudes presented confounding problems, especially in the months immediately after the riots. Burke, who created the race in 1986 with the blessing of city leaders, found himself facing intense political pressures in the debate over whether to revamp the route.

Traditionally, the 26.2-mile course was a loop that began and ended at the Los Angeles Coliseum, in a neighborhood scarred by riot damage. To realign the route--perhaps running it from downtown to West Los Angeles--would rob the inner city of a badly needed rallying point, further stinging raw nerves, Burke knew. Support from largely black communities along the homestretch of the course had been vital in building the marathon into the nation’s second largest, behind New York’s, Burke said.

But if too many runners balked at entering the riot zone, the marathon might be doomed anyway, organizers were warned. The Cassandras included elected officials and marketing specialists alike.

“They said, ‘People will not enter the race,’ ” Burke recalled. “ ‘You won’t have the entries, people will think your (event’s) popularity is falling off, and the race will start into decline. And once you start that cycle, then sponsors will abandon you and runners will abandon you and the city support will leave and all the rest of it.’ ”

Burke weighed the decision for weeks and decided that abandoning the old course would be “the wrong message” to send to an anguished city. Instead, marathon officials prepared an intensive promotional effort built around five-page advertising supplements that ran in both Runners World and Running Times magazines.

In the ads, organizers discussed not only the devastating impact of the riots, but also their own hand-wringing over the route. Sponsors were quoted about the event’s importance to a city in need of healing. The race’s financial benefit to charity was cited. And Burke was quoted on the parallels between marathon running and life.

“In life, we have to endure and persevere, and in a marathon you have to go through something most people view as impossible,” Burke said in the ad, summing up: “We are here to stay.”

Recalling the thought that went into the ad, Burke said the impact of the riots was simply too large to ignore. “You can’t run and hide from it,” the race president said in his posh West Los Angeles office. “You can pretend it never happened, but then people think you’re a little weird. We did what we felt was socially and intellectually responsible.”

But race officials went beyond even that. As the inevitable calls and letters poured in, Burke answered many of them personally. Meanwhile, he and his staff met with city officials and members of the Los Angeles Police Department to plan additional security measures. Billboards and street banners were put in place. The traditional race motto--”The L.A. Marathon, where every runner’s a star”--was scrapped in favor of a more meaningful slogan: “Together we win.” New sponsors were courted to make the race not only more visible but also easier to enter.

As part of one deal, Subway sandwich shops are distributing 40,000 entry forms at 400 outlets in Southern California, with TV commercials promoting the registration drive. The recruitment of runners took other forms in other locations. Through much of last year, race organizers dispatched delegates to other marathons in London, Honolulu, New York, Chicago and elsewhere to drum up interest worldwide.

Although the delegates go every year, their role in the wake of the riots was especially important, said Burke, who estimated the overall cost of the promotional campaign at more than $4 million.

“We thought it was very important that we (present) the city as stable and friendly . . . and not decimated by what happened in April,” Burke said. “We in Los Angeles know what’s going on . . . but the farther you get away from the city, the more our reputation has to be pierced so the people feel secure.”

Among many runners, the Los Angeles Marathon has always been especially appealing because it is geared to the masses, with live entertainment dotting the route and Elvis impersonators joining cartoon characters in the race field. The spirited atmosphere is encouraged in part because organizers lack the money and tradition to attract large numbers of world-class competitors.

For many entrants this year, the allure of the race itself has proved more powerful than the city’s daunting image. Pam Berry, 40, a medical school administrator from Dayton, Ohio, joked to friends that she may have to run the fastest marathon of her life if the King trial concludes at the wrong moment.

But she is looking forward to coming and is hoping to break the 3-hour, 30-minute mark.

“I’m a little nervous,” Berry said. “The thought crossed my mind that this may not be the time to go--and I’ve had a couple of people here in Dayton tell me that this is not a good time to go to L.A.--but I had already paid for my airline tickets” by the time the new King trial was under way.

Other runners said they felt no qualms at all about running through the streets of Los Angeles. Rick Blakely, 42, who fled Westwood for Albuquerque, N.M., when he began hearing gunshots at night, was one of many entrants who said a marathon brings people together. He called himself one of the few runners to start and finish every Los Angeles Marathon to date, and he was not expecting the streak to end.

Incidents? Well, two years ago, at the 25-mile mark, he was nearly jumped by “Morganna the kissing bandit.”

“She almost caught me, but I was able to get enough speed to get away,” Blakely recalled with a laugh. “It probably improved my time a few seconds.”

MARATHON ROUTE: B2