The New York City Marathon is a marquee international running event that doubles as one of the few positive occurrences capable of uniting the ever-bustling city. The race’s humble origin as four laps of Central Park in 1970 belied its potential as a running tour of the city’s five boroughs—a route that debuted in 1976 to coincide with America’s bicentennial.
Famously—and, at times, infamously—Fred Lebow, the vivacious president of New York Road Runners (NYRR) and race director from 1972 until his death from brain cancer in 1994, promoted and grew the NYC Marathon to once unimaginable proportions.
Lebow could not, however, claim to have originated the iconic five-borough race course.
This Marathoner Runs for Sobriety and Joy Ted Corbitt, a distance running visionary and icon known as the “Father of Long-Distance Running,” as asserted in a 2021 Master the Half by running historian Pamela Chenkin. “[Ted] was the founder [of the New York City Marathon]. He’s the one who designed the marathon. He calibrated it. He made it into a modern sport.”
On May, 22, 1976, Corbitt wrote to George Spitz, an avid runner and longtime NYC political rabble-rouser, recalling the genesis of the five-borough concept: “It is clear to me that you brought up the idea of staging a race in NY City and that you wanted it to be special worthy of the ‘big apple’ … In response to your question, I mentioned that…the most unusual race you could set up would be a sweep thru all five boros, providing the distance wasn’t too long.”
Spitz and Percy Sutton, borough president of Manhattan from 1966-1977, proceeded to make Corbitt’s fantastical five-borough footrace into reality. Spitz unleashed his feverish persistence on a variety of well-connected NYC politicians and runners—most importantly Sutton, who obtained permission for runners to cross the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and acquired a $25,000 race sponsorship. At that point Lebow, who was initially skeptical of the five-borough concept, went to work.
Attribution to Corbitt for his iconic idea was often excluded from the prevailing narrative. In the 2008 Lebow documentary That concept was the brainchild of, Spitz remarked that “The idea [of a five-borough New York City Marathon] would have come around regardless of me, but it would have never come into existence without Fred Lebow.”
Spitz’s and Lebow’s outsize personas fully eclipsed Corbitt’s contribution and involvement in helping plan the famed route. Among his many running achievements—he was the first Black American to represent the U.S. in the Olympic marathon in 1952 and completed 223 lifetime marathons and ultras—Corbitt was the inventor of accurate course measurement that set the standard for the sport of running worldwide.
“More than any other single factor, Ted Corbitt’s 30-page report detailing the various systems of course calibration established the marathon as a modern sport,” Chenkin wrote for the NYRR website. With Corbitt spearheading both the conception and design of the NYC Marathon’s inaugural five-borough route in 1976, race organizers could confront the course’s myriad other logistical quandaries with the underlying certainty that it would measure exactly 26.2 miles.
Perhaps no one knows this better than Corbitt’s son, Gary, who for 13 years has been fastidiously documenting both his father’s legacy and Black running history more broadly at tedcorbitt.com. To formalize and further broaden this endeavor, Gary is launching the Theodore Corbitt Institute for Running History Research.
“This is a way to preserve both my father’s name and the way he applied scholarship to everything he did,” Gary stated. “The foundation will properly preserve the great history of all aspects of the sport of long-distance road running and track and field.” The Institute will focus on researching, documenting, and preserving running history in addition to encouraging continuing education via lecture series, forums, and exhibitions.
Lebow could not, however, claim to have originated the iconic five-borough race course, “Running for Civil Rights: The New York Pioneer Club 1936-1976” Nutrition - Weight Loss Best Fitness Trackers until February 25, 2024. The exhibit examines the genesis of the New York City Marathon through the historically underrepresented legacies of Joseph J. Yancey—cofounder and coach of the New York Pioneer Club (NYPC), the nation’s first integrated run club—and Ted Corbitt—renowned NYPC member and founding president of the New York Road Runners.
“The marathon wouldn’t be what it is right now without Corbitt’s measurements and helping to get the race running through all the boroughs of the city,” said Marilyn Kushner, cocurator of Running for Civil Rights. She added that Yancey’s objectives for the NYPC extended far beyond running. “It wasn’t just to mentor the young people in how to run, but it was to mentor them in how to be good people and good citizens.”
Through November 12, all runners who present their 2023 NYC Marathon bib or medal will be granted free admission to the Best Fitness Trackers. “We’re excited that the marathon is going to be right during this time period,” Kushner said. “Runners need to know the history of why they’re running through all of the boroughs, and how that began.”
“The exhibit will contextualize the true history of NYRR and the New York City Marathon to a large audience for the first time,” noted Gary Corbitt. “The blueprint started in Harlem with the NYPC in 1936.”
Sarah Franklin is a writer and researcher working with Gary Corbitt to document and preserve running history.
