Dave Bedford, race director of the London Marathon, sees distance running thriving in Europe even as track and field declines.
“I think drugs has decimated our sport and the integrity of our sport,” Bedford said while in town for the Bolder Boulder. “Most people watching track and field assume everyone’s a cheat. Therefore the interest has dropped off.”
A former world record-holder for 10,000 meters, Bedford placed sixth in the 1972 Olympics 10,000 in a race won by Finland’s Lasse Viren, who was widely suspected of blood doping.
“We have unprecedented interest from people running,” Bedford said. “Usually, if a sport is on a decline, you would find public interest and people doing it declines at the same time.”
Bedford’s race is one of the world’s top marathons. It has joined forces with marathons in New York City, Boston, Chicago and Berlin to form the World Marathon Majors in a sort of marathon Grand Prix. He foresees that group conducting its own doping enforcement because ruling bodies in the sport haven’t done enough.
“The health of our sport is key,” Bedford said. “This second running boom is all about health. The two things are absolutely related. Our ability to tell the average person in the race that they are exactly the same, and their training is the same – although not at the same intensity – as the guys who are running two hours faster is a great story.
“The health aspect of our sport, and the need for that health aspect, is going to be our moral strength in making sure we don’t accept anyone at the front end who is cheating.”
