In Memoriam Fred Lebow

Today, 25 years ago, on October 9th, 1994, Fred Lebow, the co-founder of the New York City Marathon, died at the age of 62 as the result of a brain tumor.

Fred was born on June 3rd, 1932 in Romania as the sixth of seven children. As an Orthodox Jew, he fled – first from the Nazis and later from the Communists – through half of Western Europe until he emigrated to the USA in 1949 and took up residence in New York City.

During fitness training in New York’s Central Park for his favourite sport at the time, tennis, he discovered his enthusiasm for long-distance running. He joined the New York Road Runners Club – probably towards the end of the 1960s – and in 1970 became one of the co-founders of the New York City Marathon, which at the time was held on a circuit (four laps) in Central Park.

It was thanks to his perseverance and fanaticism that the New York City administration abandoned resistance to the marathon in all five counties – Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Manhattan – in 1976.

The number of participants at that time: 1,549 finishers, and 2019: over 60,000 (!!!) registrations.

I met Fred Lebow in 1983 when the SCC Berlin organized its first group trip to the NYC Marathon and we had booked a booth at the fair to promote the 1984 Berlin Marathon. He was calm and polite despite the stress of the upcoming event, but he also seemed a little introverted and inaccessible.

At the time, the Berlin Marathon didn’t have the significance it has today in the marathon scene.

I got to know him better on the occasion of the 3rd AIMS World Congress in September 1985 in Berlin and at the board meetings etc. in the following years. I suddenly got to know a completely different side of the race director of what was then the world’s biggest marathon run, friendly to cheerful, humorous and open to everything new.

The nicest thing: you could talk to him about anything under the sun for a long time without the word „marathon“ being mentioned. I had the feeling that at that time he had also largely revised his reservations about everything German, which were born of his personal experiences during his youth.

The news about his serious illness in early summer 1990 made me very sad. A small hope that he could still defeat the tumor sparked in me when I saw how he ran „his“ marathon – I think for the first time – at Grete Waitz’s side on 01.11.1992 and finished it after 5:32:34 hours.

 Fred Lebow and Grete Waitz at the New York City Marathon 1992 – Photo: Victah Sailer

The whole road-running scene, runners and organisers, owe a great deal to this pioneer of city-marathons.