NEW YORK—Thomas Dold, of Germany, held on to an eight-second lead and had just enough energy left to raise his arms in triumph as he won his third straight Empire State Building Run-Up on Tuesday.
Suzanne Walsham, a native of Australia, was also a repeat champion on the women’s side in the punishing stair-climbing race. She fought through a calf strain to complete the 86-flight slog in a time of 12:44 to earn her second straight win.
“I didn’t think I’d be able to compete,” said Walsham.
The 34-year-old accountant, who lives in Singapore, said the calf injury prevented her from running the past two weeks, but, surprisingly, didn’t slow her down on the stairs.
“Bizarre,” said Walsham.
She bested last year’s time by 28 seconds and finished 49 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Cindy Moll-Harris, of Indianapolis, a four-time winner of the event.
Dold, a 23-year-old student who lives in Stuttgart, finished in 10:08, his best time yet in the race, but well off the course record of 9:33 set by Paul Crake in 2003.
The Empire State Building Run-Up is one of the world’s premier tower races, beginning with a mad dash in the lobby and finishing 1,576 steps later on the observation deck.
On their way up, contestants jostle in a narrow stairwell, only wide enough for two people at a time. Their only breaks are short landings between flights. One of the few distractions from the pain is when their ears start popping from the altitude. On Tuesday, the race finished on a deck enshrouded at times by clouds.
The men’s field starts several minutes after the women, and Dold said that after taking an early lead he had to fight past the stragglers.
“You have to push the whole time and lift up your legs,” said Dold, who raced in knee-high black socks. He said he looked down at around the 80th floor and spotted second-place finisher Rickey Gates, 26, of Boulder, Colo., less than 8 seconds and two flights behind.
“I had to push quite hard the last three stories,” he said.
This year, 171 men and 64 women competed in the event. All but 20 contestants finished.
One middle-of-the-packer, 42-year-old psychiatrist and veteran marathoner Michael Siegell, of New York, said he’d always wanted to try the race for its unique challenge.
Asked what hurt most during the climb, he pointed to his head.
“It’s a dismal gray stairwell,” he explained. “Mentally, its tough. I’ll probably never do it again.”
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