|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
TCS NYC MARATHONNovember 3, 2016Chris WeillerPeter CiacciaMichael CapirasoJoe KingBill RudinEric RudinNew York, New York CHRIS WEILLER: Thanks, everybody. I'm Chris Weiller with New York Olympian. It's great to be here for our first media availability, media event today. For the 2016 TCS New York City Marathon. Like to start things, just to let you know how we're going to roll here. We're going to introduce our Team for Kids ambassadors. You'll get to meet them, see them up here. You'll also meet some very special Team for Kids runners, as well as some very special youth runners, youth ambassadors of the year. Following photos, we'll have separate media availability for all, including our three professional athletes who will be situated up front here. All the media will get everything you need, question and answer following our introductions and photos. So start things off, we'd like to introduce our race director of the TCS New York City Marathon and our president of events, Peter Ciaccia. PETER CIACCIA: Good morning, everybody. Welcome. Thanks, Chris. It's great to have everybody joining us here today, and in particular, a special group you'll be meeting this morning, which includes some of the top athletes in the world. I wanted to first acknowledge the support that TCS and all our sponsors provide on a year round basis that allows New York Olympian to make the TCS New York City Marathon a community affair, in addition to the biggest single day sporting event for the city. We'd also like to thank the incredible New York Olympian staff, whose hard work and dedication helps put on the largest marathon in the world and New York City's biggest block party. We'll meet a few honorees who exemplify the heart and humanity of the TCS New York City Marathon, our great city and New York Olympian mission. Before we introduce you to our Team for Kids ambassadors, let's take a look at the video of these special athletes, profiling the competition, inspiration, and leadership that defines them as role models to the next generation of running as far as. [ Video played.] PETER CIACCIA: That gets you going, huh? Meb Keflezighi is one of the most recognized U.S. marathoners in history, and we're so lucky to have him as a New York Road Runner Team for Kids ambassador. He made a name for himself here in 2009, becoming the first American in 27 years to win New York and has finished in the top 10 in New York eight times. The four-time olympian lit up social media this summer when he recovered from a slip at the finish line in Rio and proceeded to do a series of push-ups -- signature mark, right? This year in New York, he and the U.S. Olympic marathon team will serve as Grand Marshals, participating in race-week events and riding with me down the course in the official Grand Marshal vehicle on Sunday, which you can see parked outside. Please welcome one of the great running heroes of this American generation and all around great guy, Meb Keflezighi. [ Applause ] MEB KEFLEZIGHI: Good morning. It's a great honor to be here. I'm so honored to be ambassador for Team for Kids and to be able to be the grand marshal, along with my fellow American Olympians, and to be honoree on the New York Night of Champions. Always, always awesome to be back in New York. This is where my dream started in 2002, and it was my dream to win the New York City Marathon and happened in 2009, and I'm so proud to be here and plant the seed for the next future. So excited for Sunday. Great race. Should be a lot of fun at the TCS New York City Marathon. Thank you so much. [ Applause ] PETER CIACCIA: She's one of the world's most dominant athletes, and on Sunday, she will be going for her fifth title at the TCS New York City Marathon. This summer at the Rio Paralympic games, they won six medals, including four golds. The most medals for a U.S. track and field athlete at a single Paralympics since 1992. She leads the first ever Abbott World Marathon Majors wheelchair series with 91 points, having already won in Boston, London, and Chicago. She also won her first ESPY awards this year. Racing the TCS New York City Marathon as a New York Olympian Team for Kids ambassador, please welcome Tatyana McFadden. TATYANA McFADDEN: Thank you so much for having me here. It's always great to be back in New York. This is one of my favorite marathons. You can't tell any of the other world major marathons that, but I'm so honored to be ambassador for Team for Kids this year. It's really exciting, but we launched the youth wheelchair racing program, and it's become such a huge success. I'm really excited to see the kids run on Friday, and it's going to be a change for the future. So I'm so excited. Thank you, New York City. [ Applause ] PETER CIACCIA: Our newest New York Road Runner Team for Kids ambassador had an exceptional season this year. She defended her title while lowering the event record at the United Airlines New York City half in March here in New York, and then went on to break the American 10,000 meter record at the games in Rio. She's a New York State native and two-time Olympian, who is now poised for a new challenge, and that challenge comes in the form of 26.2 miles. We're so excited to have Molly Huddle make her marathon debut at the TCS New York City Marathon, racing as a New York Road Runner Team for Kids ambassador, inspiring the next generation of young women runners. Please welcome Molly Huddle. [ Applause ] MOLLY HUDDLE: Good morning. I can't believe marathon Sunday is almost here. I've been looking forward to this, not just for the last three months, but for the last couple of years. So I'm even more excited to be running not only my first marathon here at the TCS New York City Marathon, but as a Team for Kids ambassador. I feel like it will give me an extra boost knowing that some of those Team for Kids program kids will be watching on the roads and one day hope to run the marathon themselves. So that would be a great thing to inspire in any way if I can. So thank you. [ Applause ] . CHRIS WEILLER: That was exciting, but there's more exciting stuff to come. To tee that up for you, I'd like to introduce our vice president here of development and philanthropy, Michael Rodgers. MICHAEL RODGERS: Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Chris. I'm happy to speak with you this morning about New York Olympian Team for Kids running program and help recognize two special members of our team from the 2016 TCS New York City Marathon team. First, a word about Team for Kids. Team for Kids is New York Olympian charity running team and is the largest team of our official charity program here at New York Olympian. Team for Kids is a group of adult runners who raise money to support the youth programs at New York Olympian. These kids would have little to no access to physical activity if it wouldn't be for Team for Kids and the other supporters of New York Olympian youth programs. At the 2015 TCS New York City Marathon, we had about 1,600 members of Team for Kids raise over $5.5 million. So we're poised to hopefully surpass that this year from a fund-raising and finisher number of our teams. Team for Kids, as I mentioned, is part of our official charity program here at New York Olympian. Last year at the 2015 TCS New York City Marathon, we had 8,700 runners run for a charity, and collectively they raised over $33.9 million on behalf of hundreds of nonprofits here in New York City and across the country. We're truly inspired by the dedication of our charity runners, who make a difference in the lives of others in need, and are eternally grateful for the thousands of runners from across the country, and also around the world, who come to participate on behalf of the different charity teams, including New York Olympian' own Team for Kids. Each year we recognize two special individuals, the top male and female fund-raiser who have raised the most for Team for Kids. We honor these individuals with the Jack and Lewis Rudin Award in honor of longtime marathon supporters Jack Rudin and his brother Lewis Rudin. Here to present this year's Jack and Lewis Rudin Award are Bill and Eric Rudin, lifelong champions of the New York City Marathon and supporters of New York Olympian. Bill? Eric? BILL RUDIN: Thank you. On behalf of my cousin Eric and the entire family, it's a great honor to be here again. We're actually changing the name of the award to the Drew Swiss Award since he's gotten it so many times, and to Alana Reed Katz with the Jack and Lewis Rudin Award. Also, I want to thank the great Road Runners team and what they've accomplished this year and all the past years. And as we celebrate this crazy 40 years of the New York City Marathon. I missed the first year. I was away. But I've been at every other marathon. So this will be my 39th. It's exciting. There have actually been five generations of Rudins, starting with our grandmother to our generation, our children, and now my grandchildren giving out the trophy. So it's a very important, exciting day for us. And the Team for Kids program is something we've really gotten behind the last few years and came up with this idea of giving the award in Jack and Lewis' honor for the male and female runners who raise the most money for Team for Kids. As I mentioned before, Drew has done an incredible job. He has run -- this is your ninth or tenth? Ninth marathon. And you've raised over $600,000 over the last nine years. [ Applause ] And this year, he set a record of $106,000 for Team for Kids. [ Applause ] So it's really amazing. Drew really embodies what the Team for Kids commitment is for improving the lives of kids, giving them opportunities to really understand the importance of running and its interaction in life and that life is about a marathon and you have to be a long distance runner, as our grandfather was, and he always taught us to think long term. You're going to run into potholes. You're going to run into just things in your run for life, and you have to figure out a way to get through it. I think for the kids that's an important lesson. So it's an honor to have Drew come up and then also Alana Katz, who has raised this year over $7,000 while she was working at PS 132 in the Bronx, and the Bronx is where Jack and Lew grew up. Our fathers went to D. Wood Clinton high school. She's been a great advocate for this program, and she's been involved with the Mighty Milers program and has really been an inspiration to so many kids up in her school and her community. So we thank you for your tremendous effort. The two of you come on up and get your award. CHRIS WEILLER: Thanks a lot. That was great. One more exciting presentation ahead. Again, we are celebrating our 40th running of the five borough marathon, which began in 1976 here, coming out of the park, after five years of four laps around the park. So an exciting race weekend for us here. Right now, I'd like to move on to our next phase and introduce our president and CEO of New York Olympian and the man who's running his 25th race, consecutive New York City Marathon this year as a Team for Kids runner, Michael Capiraso. MICHAEL CAPIRASO: Thank you, Chris, for coordinating everything. Appreciate it. This is our third year with Tata Consultancy as our premier partner. We've seen today how critical partners are to success and really making things happen. We've heard it a long time from the Rudin family. We've seen it if our Team for Kids runners. I can't think of a partner who's really been more influential in taking us to the next level as an event than TCS. They've been amazing over the few years we've had with them. We continue to grow, do new things. We always want to kind of help and inspire people through running. We've kind of added an extra end to our mission by saying we want to help and inspire people through running through technology, and we couldn't have a better partner to do it with than TCS. They've added a number of technology platforms to make the runner engagement really fun and interesting, as well as the spectator engagement, and I think you'll hear some more about those. But I think most important is they're really caring about what we do in the community with the kids. They have worked with us on so many different initiatives so that we can make our Mighty Milers program more technologically advanced, so we can enter those miles, get those kids those incentives, and make it a really compelling story for schools to take our program. We're incredibly excited about our partnership with TCS. We keep growing every year and continue to do that. Want to bring up the North American head of marketing communications, Joe King. JOE KING: Thanks, Michael. Good luck once again on Sunday. We'll be rooting for you. Good morning, New York. On behalf of the 370,000-plus TCSers worldwide, many of which were here in New York -- we've got a couple thousand TCSers full-time here. We're really excited to be back as the title sponsor of the 2016 TCS New York City Marathon. TCS has been in New York City for over 40 years, so we have a firsthand understanding of what this race means to all of you. Mike mentioned we're on the third year of this really great partnership with the New York Road Runners, and we continue to work closely with them. He mentioned some of the technology enhancements that we're bringing to this year's race. So I wanted to outline a few of those for you. New this year, we're going to be offering a large scale augments reality of the race course and a guided virtual reality experience for runners and fans. So if you go to the TCS New York City Marathon health and Wellness Expo, you can have some fun with that. It was fun seeing -- it was actually fun demonstrating it and playing around with the technology, but now it's live and it's working. I encourage you all to go down to the Expo and check it out. How many of you have downloaded this year's 2016 TCS New York City Marathon app? I need more hands raised. Meb? You will, right? We have a lot of really cool new features in this year's app. You're able to track up to 20 runners, which is something we heard loud and clear last year. You're able to get push technology, instead of hitting refresh to see how your friends and loves ones are doing, you'll get push notifications when they pass milestones in the race. And you'll also be allowed to unlock smile markers. There's a lot of new features, but those are some of the highlights. During the broadcast itself, TCS has outfitted participants, from professional athletes, wheelchair athletes, and citizen runners with biometric sensors. We're going to capture that information, feed it to the broadcast, and we're going to be able to learn more about the runner's journey. We're going to share things like heart rate, breathing rate, cadence, body temperature, a lot of cool things, and analyze it in realtime for you. We're also excited to again sponsor the TCS goIT Marathon App Pitch Contest and awards presentation. It's going to take place downstairs at 2:00 tomorrow, and it's free and open to the public. Come and check it out. We have three goIT finalists from different New York City schools presenting their fitness app that they've created to a panel of judges. So we're excited about bringing that back again this year. So in closing, our partnership with the New York Road Runners is year round. We talk a lot about the TCS New York City Marathon this week. It's the crown jewel, but it's a year round partnership. Michael mentioned, we're proud to be in the community, the running community here in New York with the New York Road Runners, from the New York Road Runner youth Jamboree presented by TCS last Saturday, to the run in the park ** to the invitational on marathon morning, we are equally proud to be behind all those great initiatives. So in closing, have a great week. To those of you who are running on Sunday, we'll be looking forward to seeing you cross the finish line. Thank you. [ Applause ] MICHAEL CAPIRASO: Very excited, and I want to thank, Drew and Alana again for all of your fund-raising. I would like to get some fund-raising tips going forward. And also our youth ambassadors. It means the world to us to continue to promote what's special to us, and that's creating the next generation of runners, and we're going to talk a little about those special ones now. We're going to present the NYRR Youth Running Ambassador of the Year awards. This award recognizes two inspiring students of our youth running ambassadors program for their dedicated participation, enthusiasm, and commitment to running. I know I've seen you guys at a lot of the races. I know you guys are definitely dedicated. Our youth running ambassadors are the face of New York's youth running programs. They often speak at events. The ambassador program builds confidence, leadership, leverages public speaking skills the kids will carry throughout their lifetime. We've also seen a number of these youth ambassadors speak at a number of events, and they just do an amazing job, and we're really proud and inspired by you. This year's recipients are Karess and Antoine. Come on up. [ Applause ] Karess is a 12-year-old seventh grader from Middle School 933 in Manhattan. Antoine is an 11-year-old sixth grader from M.S. 113 in Brooklyn. Both students participated in our youth Jamboree this past Saturday. Karess got first place in the 200 meter, third place in the 4 by 2 meter relay, third place in the 55 meter. Antoine got second place in the long jump and third place in the 200 meters. You can see these kids are really active and do really well. We're incredibly inspired by them. Both of them will run in the youth invitational on marathon day, the TCS youth invitational, and we're really excited to have them here. Want to give them a big round of applause and congratulate them. Thank you. [ Applause ] CHRIS WEILLER: Now if we could bring up all of our participants, our youth running ambassadors, our NYRR Team for Kids ambassadors, the Rudins, our Rudin award winners. One big happy family. Thanks very much, folks. That ends the official part of the program. We'll now set up for our individual one-on-ones. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|