Boston Marathon 2013: implications and facts

The Boston Marathon is an annual sporting event that takes place across several cities in Massachusetts. It is always held on Patriots' Day, on the third Monday of April. The first race took place in 1897. He was inspired by the success of the first marathon at the 1896 Summer Olympics. The Boston Marathon is the oldest annual race, which is also considered one of the most famous in the world.

The marathon attracts about 500,000 spectators, making it the most popular sporting event in New England. Although in 1897 in this race participated only 18 athletes, currently it has an average of about 30,000 registered participants. The Jubilee Boston Marathon in 1996 became the record holder by the number of participants: it registered 38708 people wishing to join the race, 36748 people went to the start and 35868 reached the finish line.

History

The first Boston Marathon was organized in April 1897, inspired by the revival of the race at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. It is the oldest of the continuously operating and second-longest in North America.

The event is timed to the celebration of the Patriots 'Day (Patriots' Day) and symbolizes the connection between Athenian and American freedom fighters. The first winner was John McDermott, who ran a distance of 24.5 miles for 2:55:10. The race, which became known as the Boston Marathon, has since been held every year. In 1924, the start was moved to Hopkinton, and the route was extended to 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km). This is done to meet the standards set at the 1908 Olympics and codified by the IAAF in 1921.

Initially, the Boston Marathon was a local event, but, thanks to its fame and prestige, he began to attract runners from around the world. For most of its history, this event was absolutely non-profit, and the only prize for the victory was a wreath woven from the branches of an olive tree. Sponsorship prizes were awarded only in the 1980s, after professional athletes began to refuse to participate in the race without significant awards. The first cash prize for the victory in the marathon was received in 1986.

The fight for the right of women to participate in the marathon

Women were not allowed to officially participate in the Boston Marathon until 1972. Robert Gibb, according to the organizers of the competition, is the first woman to completely run the entire distance of the marathon (in 1966). In 1967, Catherine Switzer, registered as "K. V. Switzer," became the first woman to run to the very end with the official number of the participant. She managed to reach the finish line, despite the well-known incident, during which the representative of the administration of the marathon Jock Semple tried to rip her number off and not let her escape. In 1996, women who had unofficially participated in the marathon from 1966 to 1971, and the first to reach the finish line, were officially recognized as champions in hindsight. In 2015, about 46% of the participants were female.

Scandal with Rosie Ruiz

The scandal occurred at the Boston Marathon in 1980, when an amateur runner Rosie Ruiz emerged from nowhere and won a race among women. Representatives of the administration of the marathon suspected wrong, when they found that Ruiz is not visible on the video of the race almost to the very end. Subsequent investigation showed that Ruiz missed most of the competition, and then, about a mile (1.6 km) to the finish, mixed with the crowd and easily overtook rivals. The judges officially disqualified Rosie. Boston marathon in 1980, thus won the Canadian athlete Jacqueline Garo.

Accidents

In 1905, James Edward Brooks of the city of North Adams in Massachusetts died of pneumonia shortly after running a marathon, never returning home. In 1996, a 62-year-old man from Sweden died of a heart attack. In 2002, 28-year-old Cynthia Lucero died of hyponatremia.

Boston Marathon 2013

During the 2013 marathon, April 15 at 14:49 local time, more than two hours after the winners crossed the finish line, two explosions occurred on Boylston Street, about 200 meters to the finish line, the distance between them was 180 meters.

As a result of the explosions, three people were killed and at least 144 people were injured, 17 of them seriously injured. Among the dead was an eight-year-old boy. No group of terrorists took responsibility for these explosions. The case was taken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and soon received photos of two suspects.

On the night of April 18, as a result of the shooting in Cambridge, not far from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a policeman died, followed by an operation to capture two suspects, the brothers Tamerlane and Jokhar Tsaranaev. The eldest of them, Tamerlane, died in the hospital early in the morning on April 19. Residents of nearby areas were advised to stay inside their homes with locked doors. Public transport in Boston was stopped, including the routes of the largest in the state of the Transportation Administration of the Gulf of Massachusetts and the railway company Amtrak; Schools and universities were closed, as well as many commercial enterprises. The human rights bodies, led by the state police, raided the town of Watertown, and on April 19 at 8:45 am, Jokhar Tsarnaev was arrested.

Boston marathon 2013, the explosion that caused the death of an 8-year-old boy and a 29-year-old woman (both residents of the Boston suburbs), as well as a 23-year-old female student from China, is a huge tragedy for the entire civilized humanity. Among the seriously wounded were the mother and sister of the deceased boy.

Terrorist act in a marathon

Explosions of two bombs with an interval of 15 seconds sounded near the Copley Square in Boston. As a result of the terrorist attack, three people were killed and more than a hundred were injured of varying severity. The winners crossed the finish line about two hours before the explosions, but there were still many runners who only had to run to the end of the Boston Marathon.

The attack was a surprise to all: before the attack, no threats from terrorist organizations were reported.

The explosive devices were of the type that they could be produced by taking instructions from the Internet or any other source. The explosive was inside six-liter pressure cookers, which were hidden in nylon sports backpacks.

Skirmishes, chase and arrest

Soon after the photos were published, there was a shooting in the vicinity of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, near the building of 32 (Stata Center). This happened on April 18 at 22 hours 48 minutes local time (02:48 UTC). Several shots were fired. The bullets hit a police officer who was sitting in a patrol car. He was taken to the Massachusetts Central Hospital, and, after some time, the doctors constituted death. The policeman was Sean Collier, he was 26 years old, he was from Somerville, Massachusetts, and worked in the Department of Police at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Tsarayev brothers took the silver Mercedes SUV in Cambridge and forced the owner to withdraw $ 800 from the ATM. Taking the money, they let the owner of the car. The suspects told him that they were held responsible for the explosion at the Boston Marathon. The police tracked the car to the city of Watertown in Massachusetts. Law enforcement officers of Watertown reported several clashes and shootings, during which explosions were also heard. The Boston Globe newspaper reported the same evening that people who were wanted for the attack during the marathon race participated in the shootout. A shootout with the police and an explosion of bombs thrown by criminals were watched by residents of Watertown. One of the brothers was caught, but the second managed to escape in a stolen SUV. In the shootout, a 33-year-old member of the transport police of Massachusetts Bay, Richard H. Donahue Jr., was seriously wounded. Fortunately, the wound was not fatal.

On the morning of April 19, after a car chase and a gunfight with the police, one of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was taken to the Medical Center of Bet-Israel, where he died from several gunshot wounds and injuries sustained during the explosion. The FBI published photos of two suspects at the Watertown events. The second of the brothers, Johar, sometimes called "a suspect in a white hat," according to police, was still at large. Authorities report that the brothers threw homemade bombs from their car into police officers who pursued them from Cambridge to Watertown.

In 2015, one of the perpetrators of the explosion, Jokhar Tsarnaev, was convicted of 30 counts and sentenced to death.

Memorial Ceremony

On April 18, an inter-confessional memorial service for the victims of the terrorist act took place in the Boston Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Cross. It featured US President Barack Obama and some veterans of the Boston Marathon.

Doping scandal at the 2014 marathon

In the marathon race this year Kenyan runner Rita Jeptu came to the finish line first among women. However, she was disqualified after representatives of the World Anti-Doping Agency said that her test for banned substances showed a positive result. Hearings on this case took place in January 2015.

Boston Marathon 2016

In 2016, American Jami Marseille was the first woman to reach the finish of the Boston Marathon, with both feet amputated. The main event was Bobby Gibb, the one that ran a marathon distance exactly 50 years ago, in 1966. The winner of 2016 among women, Ethiopian athlete Acede Baisa, gave Bobby Gibb his prize. She agreed to accept it on the condition that in a year she would come to Ethiopia and return the cup to the legitimate owner.