Marathon to Try a Battle of Sexes

Is it an idea whose time has come or a gimmick to attract more top runners to a marathon whose organizers do not pay appearance fees, as they do in Boston, New York and Chicago?

The answer to those questions may be clear Sunday, when a new format will be used for the running portion of the 19th Los Angeles Marathon. The 26-mile 385-yard race will start on Figueroa Street near 6th at 8:12 a.m.

The Challenge, as race organizers have dubbed it, will allow the elite women’s field to start about 20 minutes ahead of the elite men’s field, and a $50,000 bonus will be awarded to the first runner -- male or female -- to cross the finish line.

The exact time frame of the women’s handicap will not be announced until the elite runners’ news conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Thursday, but it is expected to be about 20 minutes because the average difference between the winning men’s time and the winning women’s times in the previous 10 L.A. Marathons has been 19 minutes 49 seconds.

“Boston has got veneration and tradition,” said Toni Reavis, a nationally known road-running expert who has done the television commentary for the L.A. Marathon. “New York has the whole five boroughs thing. And Chicago has that world-record course.... This format gives L.A. something that no one else has got. And I think it will elevate the exposure of the elite athletes, because someone is going to win $100,000 that day.”

That $100,000 figure comes from adding the $50,000 bonus for the winner of the Challenge to the $25,000 and car worth more than $26,000 that each men’s and women’s winner will receive.

Although L.A. will become the first marathon to award a bonus to the winner of a handicapped race, the format is not unique to endurance events.

A 10-mile race in Holland called the Dam tot Dam -- Dam to Dam in English -- has been using the format for years, and a triathlon in Minneapolis awarded $250,000 to American Barb Lindquist last year when she won a handicapped race.

Reavis suggested such a race in a column he wrote for the online Runner’s World Daily as a way of generating interest in a sport that is not as popular with the U.S. public as it was during the running boom from the mid-1970s to the late ‘80s because, he says, of the dominance of foreign runners and the dearth of elite U.S. competitors.

Reavis proposed that instead of limiting the number of foreign runners, why not set up a format where their participation generates interest.

Marie Patrick, executive vice president of the L.A. Marathon, read Reavis’ column and asked him to sit down with her and marathon President William Burke last summer to discuss ways of generating more interest in their race, which recently has been dominated by Kenyan men who were little-known beyond the running community.

“[Toni] talked about this idea, and it was two seconds after that, I said, ‘I want to do that,’ ” Burke said. “I could be wrong, but I think this will represent a trend for major marathons.”

After that, talk turned to the size of the bonus. Burke said three figures were discussed, ranging from a low of $25,000 to a high of $100,000. Although they decided to go with the medium figure, $50,000, Burke said that number could increase if the format generates enough interest during its three-year trial period.

How much interest it has generated this year is not clear.

Burke said there had been more interest from elite runners in this year’s L.A. Marathon than in previous years because of it. The elite men’s field this year does have more runners, 12, who have broken 2 hours 12 minutes than ever before. That, even though defending champion Mark Yatich of Kenya had to withdraw last week because of a recent recurrence of malaria.

“I think it has created quite a bit of buzz,” said Bill Orr, the L.A. Marathon’s elite athlete coordinator since 2000. “We talked to a lot of agents and handlers about this idea, and the majority of them were all for it.”

Reavis said that an agent with clients in both the elite men’s and women’s fields told him he wasn’t convinced the new format had improved the quality of the fields, but that he did expect the runners who were in L.A. to run faster because of it.

“It sets up a race within a race,” Reavis said of the format. “If you’re a man, do you just try to win the men’s title and forget about trying to catch the women? Or do you try to break free of the other men at some point and go after the top women? That’s what makes it interesting.”