It’s Not About Who Gets to the Finish Line First

It was a year ago and still he weeps, heaving sobs, embarrassed apologies.

“There were only a couple of officials and policemen waiting for me when I crossed the line,” recalls Federico Blanco of Sylmar. “But when they cheered, they sounded like millions.”

It was a year ago and sometimes he thinks it was last week. Remembers it as if he were doing it now.

Dragging his nearly 300-pound body across the Los Angeles Marathon finish line at Figueroa. Weaving into a nearby hotel. Finding a lobby telephone, calling his family, crumpling to the floor and remaining there until relatives and a doorman carry him to his car.

Federico Blanco weeps not from despair, but triumph.

The way he figures it, anybody can be motivated to win a marathon.

Not everybody has the guts to finish last.

Meet Mr. 16,000, the approximate place that Blanco finished the marathon last year, 10 hours and 44 minutes after he started, the last male to officially cross the finish line.

“If I was going any slower,” he says. “I’d be standing still.”

Those competitive runners who annually complain that the L.A. Marathon is not elite or prestigious enough, they never bump into a guy like Blanco.

They are being professionally massaged when he hits the halfway point.

They are dining on grilled fish by the time he hits mile 20.

They are sleeping when he is finishing.

They are missing the point of an event that they think is about them.

It’s not.

It’s about Blanco. It’s about us.

It’s about 20,000 scufflers and skaters and grandmothers. It’s about blind heroes and wheelchair studs, and the hundreds every year who are running for someone else.

It’s not the Boston or New York marathons, but guess what?

This is not Boston or New York.

This is Los Angeles, a place where sports are not life, but merely one of its ornaments. We watch and play not because it feels important, but because it feels good.

This city’s biggest race should celebrate that.

It should continue to focus its attention on the masses, not on that elite running tandem of Who Knows and Who Cares, the ones who complete the course long before anybody is ready for the race to end.

Just wondering, but if a marathon is only about elite runners, why does it not stop when they do?

This city’s biggest race should not be judged by a stopwatch, but by the number of people who finish in T-shirts with sleeves.

It should be judged by the finish of Blanco, a 53-year-old Los Angeles County safety police officer who several years ago was counseled by a dying friend.

“She told me, ‘The best moment for anything in life is now,’ ” he recalls. “She knew I was worried about my gain in weight. She knew I wanted to try the marathon. She gave me no excuses.”

So he tried, first with the shorter 3.1-mile race, another target of critics, but the only way for many runners to test this strange water.

After several completions of the shorter course, two years ago he attempted the 26.2 mile race.

It rained throughout the day. He was dead last. At the halfway point, the decorated Vietnam veteran began hallucinating.

“I saw an Air Force officer standing on the side of the road with a cup of water,” he says. “I took the cup from him and noticed he wasn’t wet. I drank the water, threw down the cup, looked up, and he was gone.”

Blanco doesn’t want to tell this story. He doesn’t want to tell any of these stories because he doesn’t think anybody will believe him.

An overweight man--with about 300 pounds on a 5-foot-10 frame--in a marathon? Even walking?

Marathon officials furnished me with his time and phone number, so it was I who called him.

Officials noted there may have been three females still on the course when he finished,although he said the finish line closed soon after he crossed.

His boss on the police force, which he serves as a hospital security guard, verified everything else.

With three miles remaining on that rainy Sunday two years ago, Blanco walked off the course in pain. He was accosted by a gang member who accused him of quitting.

“I said, ‘I’m not quitting, I’m stopping,’ ” he recalls. “There is a difference.”

He set out last year determined to avoid another interruption. He trained like many walkers would train--by simply going around the block.

Like many of us, he didn’t have time for anything else.

“But I wanted to show myself that I still have that toughness and courage that got me home from Vietnam,” he says.

Three or four hours into the race, he was alone except for the usual cheers and catcalls.

“Lot of people on rooftops and bridges cheered for me,” he recalls. “Then you have the kids making fun of my weight.”

Eight hours into the race, the water stops were closed, the spectators were gone, he was accosted by people walking out of bars.

“They would say, ‘My God, you’re still walking?’ ” he says. “I was in so much pain, I could not stop to talk.”

One woman ran out of a restaurant with oranges, water and several types of juice. He would simply walk into other stores when he needed a drink.

He is forever thankful for one Jack-in-the-Box restaurant. That is where he used the restroom.

As darkness approached, he says he would concentrate on the sky, or on a baby’s smile from a passing stroller, or on the strange cracks in the ground.

“I’ve lived in L.A. all my life and this is the first time I really smelled the earth,” he says. “It was awesome, to see the city from someplace other than in a car.”

By then, with the course reopened to traffic, Blanco was forced to walk in gutters and wait for traffic lights.

Nearing the final mile, he panicked when he heard the cackle of a police radio ordering the signs removed and the finish line closed.

“I shouted to them, ‘I’m still here. Blanco is still here!’ ” he recalls. “So a security guy on a bicycle radioed for everyone to wait.”

And so they did.

Say what you want about the tradition of Boston or the majesty of New York.

The Los Angeles Marathon waited for Federico Blanco. As long as it is allowed to continue serving people instead of pride, it will wait for you.