NEW YORK CITY MARATHON

November 3, 2002

Allan Steinfeld

ALLAN STEINFELD: Thank you, Richard. At the outset the women's start, which was an experiment, which I mentioned previously, appears to have worked and worked very well. Certainly, after people begin recovering in a few weeks, we will sit down and go over any problems that exist, if they need to be solved or what we'll do for next year. We will obviously announce it not too soon after that. It appears that it made sense. The race finished, the press truck got in, the next race came in. That press truck came in. The unofficial count for starters -- and the reason I say unofficial, is it was so crowded out there, sometimes everybody steps over the mat. And so we compare the splits along the course to those people who were at the start. It may be changed, but they do not go down, only go up. It is 32,185.

ALLAN STEINFELD: I am not sure how you judge what the wind conditions are when you are moving 12 miles an hour, when you are on a motorcycle. My sense is looking at flags. Some flags pretty often were standing straight up, I mean straight out, which was heading -- and I don't know because I didn't go the full route of the course, because I wanted to be back for the mayor at the finish line, so I cut out at 72nd Street, so I don't know what the wind conditions were. When you come off the 135th Street Bridge, it tends not to be windy in the park just because it's surrounded by trees. It didn't appear to be as cold as I thought it would be. I get cold very quickly, but when we stopped, the sun was there it was warming up. It might have been 40, 41 degrees but there was certainly a very strong wind.

ALLAN STEINFELD: I am confused. I didn't hear what you said.

ALLAN STEINFELD: I mean, from the elite athlete group?

ALLAN STEINFELD: Part of that may be because we have an 8:50 start which is for athletes with disabilities and often there are guides with them, and obviously very slow because they have got disability. We have a wheelchair starter at 10:20 and head crank at 10:25, so I am just surmising because I didn't see it. It's possible that there was a crowd of athletes with disabilities in wheelchairs in the section, so they were forced to bring themselves closer together, but that's something we will explore looking at the film. Obviously, you saw it on TV so we will see it too.

ALLAN STEINFELD: Let me ask you something: Do you like the space here?

ALLAN STEINFELD: We will try our best to get it for next year because it seems so much more spacious, it makes so much more sense. We have a press conference, which will be ontime tomorrow morning at 10:30 at Tavern on the Green, because we are not opening the New York Stock Exchange, we are closing it.