Is The Boston Marathon Fair To Charity Runners?

One columnist doesn’t think so.

Rich Tenorio, a writer for the Daily Item, is not happy with the Boston Athletic Association. The marathon is receiving a lot of flak lately for excluding qualified runners due to size constraints. However, Tenorio’s complaint isn’t aimed in that direction. Instead, he’s upset at how few charity bibs are available (6,000 last year). This is in comparison to 21,000 entries for runners who met the qualifying standards.

“Bemoaning the presence of non-qualifiers reveals one of the uglier aspects of sports, which is when athletes who have become so good at their craft want to shut out the ‘ordinary’ people who also want to compete. We saw this in the NFL personnel who passed on Danny Woodhead … and we are seeing it now with the Marathon miscreants,” he wrote.

In his column, Tenorio urges the Boston Athletic Association to “expand the options available to charity runners.”  According to Tenorio, having to raise up to seven thousand dollars for charity in order to run the marathon “sounds less like charity fundraising and more like ‘predatory’ fundraising.”

For More: Daily Item