KEFLEZIGHI LOOKS TO DEFEND BOSTON TITLE
Two weeks before his 40th birthday, Meb Keflezighi is healthy and back to try to defend his title in today’s Boston Marathon. He would be the first man to win back-to-back races since Kenya’s Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot won his third in a row in 2008. No American man has won consecutive Boston Marathons since Bill Rodgers finished first from 1978 to 1980. The women’s field includes Shalane Flanagan and Desiree Linden, who could give the USA its first victory in the race since 1985. Other past Boston champions competing are Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa (2013) and Kenyans Wesley Korir (2012), Sharon Cherop (2012) and Caroline Kilel (2011). Other men to watch: Wilson Chebet of Kenya, last year’s runner-up, and top Americans Dathan Ritzenhein and Matt Tegenkamp.
Thousands of runners
BOSTON and fans are scheduled to line up today for the Boston Marathon, just as they’ve done since 1897. But this year is markedly different because one thing is coloring all else: the federal trial of marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Tsarnaev was convicted on all 30 counts against him in the 2013 marathon bombings, but he has not been sentenced. Tuesday, the region’s eyes will turn back to federal court, where the penalty phase begins. The same jury that convicted him April 8 will decide whether he gets the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Against the trial’s weighty backdrop, today’s event offers a welcome reprieve from wounds reopened in recent testimony. The race has taken on fresh resonance as a symbol of hope and peace for a world scarred too frequently by terrorism.
“Last year was more defiant,” said Boston resident Jack Byrne, recalling how the city refused to cancel the marathon despite fears of the potential for more attacks. “This year is more hopeful. This is kind of our first step toward getting back to normal.”
Tsarnaev’s trial is helping to make the event feel safe again, according to Byrne, a 28-year-old guitar teacher who vividly remembers heeding a citywide mandate to stay indoors during the manhunt.
“If he’s the guy and he’s convicted, then I guess that makes it feel a little bit more safe,” Byrne said.
Legacies of the 2013 bombings are everywhere. At dozens of checkpoints installed last year to seal off entire sections of the course, guards will again be searching bags and patting down spectators. New measures have taken effect, including a prohibition on drones anywhere along the 26.2-mile course.
Bostonians say their iconic marathon, which draws runners from 86 countries, has not been diminished by the extra precautions.
The field of runners has swelled to 30,000, up from the standard 27,000, and about 2,000 were turned away because of space constraints.
Runners and spectators are expected to pump $182 million into the local economy. That represents a 33% increase since before the bombings.
What’s more, the trial hasn’t tainted the event, Bostonians say. On the contrary, the ability to run and cheer shows the city’s true colors as “compassionate and resilient, not revengeful,” according to Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.
“We’re not typified by a punitive nature” in Boston, Lebowitz said. “We always see some sort of path to redemption.”
Boston can use the refreshment that comes with the marathon, an event held on Patriots’ Day, a state holiday on the third Monday of April. Record snowfall, bitter cold and public transit failures made for an especially harsh winter in Massachusetts.
In March, daily news reports came from the federal courthouse, where graphic images showed bodies torn apart in April 2013. Amputees told of excruciating pain and lives forever changed.
Having been through so much lately, the region is welcoming a one-day break with fun traditions, festivities and relatively mild temperatures. The timing of the trial feels fortunate to some, because the next stage could be more divisive than the guilt phase.
In signs of the region’s fault lines, some victims and family members have said justice requires death for Tsarnaev. Others, including the parents of 8-yearold victim Martin Richard, want him sentenced to life in prison.
Across Greater Boston, 58% oppose the death penalty for Tsarnaev and 31% support it, according to a March poll by WBUR, a Boston affiliate of National Public Radio.
“I think death penalty — get rid of him,” said Derek Crooks, a print machine operator from Nashua, N.H. “If he gets life, he’ll get three square meals a day, probably the best care. ... Taxpayer money is going to pay to take care of him.”
Omar Santos, a painter from Malden, Mass., said a death sentence wouldn’t be severe enough. In the boat where he hid before capture, Tsarnaev wrote that he envied his deceased brother, who had received his “reward.”
“I really want to see him pay,” Santos said. “He needs to spend the rest of his days thinking about what he did.”