Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials a proud moment in Columbia sports history
Twenty years have passed, yet the scenes – world-class athletes winding their way through the streets of the Midlands, thousands lining the route and cheering them on their way toward the Olympic Games and the national sports spotlight focused on South Carolina’s capital city – seem as fresh as yesterday.
Far-fetched, ridiculous and preposterous are adjectives some critics used to describe the Carolina Marathon Association’s plan to bid for the opportunity to stage the 1996 U.S. Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials, a 26.2-mile challenge of mental and physical endurance. One of the architects who would play a leading role in the spectacular success reflects and said, “We thought at first, ‘That’s a crazy idea.’ ”
Yet, just as the Broncos thumbed their noses at the “experts” in Super Bowl 50, the Columbia area running community refused to take “no” for an answer. It was a perfect illustration of the value of teamwork – governments, businesses, communities and volunteers joining hands and pulling in the same direction.
The Midlands sparkled
“Every time we ran into a potential roadblock, we found the right person to handle the situation,” said Russ Pate, the one most responsible for bringing the event to the Midlands. “Eventually, everybody in the area wanted to be part of it.”
So it was on Feb. 10, 1996, an unsung runner named Jenny Spangler made her final turn on that golden Saturday, and the cheers that had been ringing in her ears all morning reached a crescendo. The fans along Main Street watched a bit of history that characterized a perfect end for a perfect plan.
All these years later, Pate and Rick Noble – who along with Larry Mattox provided the direction – sit in their “idea” sanctum, Groucho’s in Five Points. “In that booth over there,” Noble said. “We kicked it around and I thought, ‘This is a crazy idea.’ ”
They felt compelled to take the opportunity to the Marathon Association board. Larry Hamilton, a running enthusiast who writes a running column for The State, first broached the possibility, and, Pate said, “Let’s talk about it and see if there’s any interest.”
The running community responded enthusiastically, but there were challenges of finances and logistics to overcome. Their original estimate of $300,000 grew to $1 million. “We didn’t have a mega-company in the area to approach for sponsorship,” Pate said.
A Problem
At a meeting of government and civic leaders, Frank McComas, then publisher of The State, provided the financial catalyst by pledging $100 for each of the company’s 600 employees. “That $60,000 became the gold sponsorship, and some other companies matched that,” Noble said. “Then, Hootie and the Blowfish did a concert and gave us a check for $45,000. Governments that sometimes can’t agree on anything all, came on board. We were dealing with six or seven municipalities, counties, the state DOT and Fort Jackson. But we found the right person at the right time.”
Pate, a USC professor and former world-class distance runner with top-10 finishes in the Boston Marathon among his credentials, noted the 1996 race was about three years in the making and most of the work came before “Olympic Fever” for the 1996 Games in Atlanta reached an epidemic stage.
“We wanted to make the race the ‘Olympics’ for every runner,” Pate said. “Only one could win and only the top three could make the U.S. Olympic team, but we wanted every participant to have a special experience. I had an email recently from the husband of a runner in the 2000 Women’s Olympic Trials (also held in the Midlands) and he wondered if we had a picture of her. The point of mentioning that is to show how important the event is to everyone who participates.”
Winning the bid
Columbia earned the bid over San Diego, Charlotte and Philadelphia in 1993 and Mattox, then executive director of the Marathon Association, said that success can be traced to an earlier date. In keeping with the group’s strategy of bringing world-class runners to the Carolina Marathon each year, the organization had Joan Benoit Samuelson in 1987.
“She loved it here,” Mattox said, “and she became a great ambassador for our bid to get the Trials.”
The national selection team and Columbia community leaders gathered in 1993 to discuss the bid and the Marathon advocates pulled out its ace of trumps – Samuelson, who in 1984 became the winner of the first Women’s Olympic Marathon (1984). The Columbia group played a tape of her endorsing the site based on her experience with the Carolina Marathon.
“You could almost hear the committee members thinking, ‘These people are for real,’ ” Noble said.
Pate and crew accepted the bid shortly thereafter, and Maddox said, “We were accepted in the (national) running community. It’s like we got an invitation to the Masters.”
It takes a community
“Very few things went wrong,” Noble said. “Getting the blue line (the course for the runners to follow) painted created a lot of attention and galvanized interest.”
Ideas bubbled from every meeting, and volunteers signed up enthusiastically. Community interest swelled.
The winner, Spangler, had qualified 61st and few who qualify that low win a world-class distance race. She had been an All-American at the University of Iowa and held the junior marathon record at that time, but she’d struggled through injuries and a failed marriage. However, Mattox remembered that her coach, Willie Rios, told anyone who would listen that she was primed for a great race.
Pate, who knows from experience the challenges of the marathon, watched Spangler pull away from the field on the Lonsford Drive hill off Trenholm Road. “I remember thinking, ‘That’s interesting,’ ” he said. “That left (the favorites) with a decision to make. Would they go with her or would they hold back and expect her to fade?”
She did not fade.
The organizers certainly faced challenges. Among them: Contracts with national sponsors prevented local officials from using the word “Olympics” or the Olympic rings in advertising. “We tap-danced around that,” Pate said. And Mattox pointed out that Noble became a bulldog in dealing with some USA Track and Field officials.
“You get all the responsibility and none of the authority,” Pate said.
It will never happen again
Sad to say, Pate said, but metro areas the size of Columbia wouldn’t draw interest from the powers that be today. They look for the mega-markets, Dallas or Los Angeles, and he said, “The races get swallowed up in those cities; it’s almost as if they didn’t happen.”
But Columbia “made this our Super Bowl,” Pate said, “and you saw the results.”
Yes, and so it was on Feb. 10, 1996, an unsung runner named Jenny Spangler made her final turn on that golden Saturday, and the cheers that had been ringing in her ears all morning reached a crescendo. The fans along Main Street watched a bit of history that characterized a perfect end for a perfect plan.
This story was originally published February 9, 2016 at 8:13 PM with the headline "Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials a proud moment in Columbia sports history."