Despite making a wrong turn in the final mile, Marcel Hug of Switzerland won the men's wheelchair race at the pandemic-delayed Boston Marathon on Monday, finishing the slightly detoured course in 1 hour, 8 minutes, 11 seconds — just seven seconds off his record pace.
Hug, who has raced Boston eight times and has five victories here, cost himself a $50,000 course record bonus when he missed the second-to-last turn, following the lead vehicle instead of turning from Commonwealth Avenue onto Hereford Street.
Manuela Schär, also from Switzerland, won the women's wheelchair race in 1:35:20.
With fall foliage replacing the spring daffodils and more masks than mylar blankets, the 125th Boston Marathon at last left Hopkinton for its long-awaited long run to Copley Square.
A rolling start and shrunken field allowed for social distancing on the course, as organizers tried to manage amid a changing COVID-19 pandemic that forced them to cancel the race last year for the first time since the event began in 1897.
A light rain greeted participants at the Hopkinton Green, where about 30 uniformed members of the Massachusetts National Guard left at 6 a.m. The men's and women's wheelchair racers — some of whom completed the 26.2-mile distance in Chicago a day earlier — left shortly after 8 a.m., followed by the men's and women's professional fields.
"We took things for granted before COVID-19. It's great to get back to the community and it puts things in perspective," said National Guard Capt. Greg Davis, 39, who was walking with the military group for the fourth time. "This is a historic race, but today is a historic day."
Held annually since a group of Bostonians returned from the 1896 Athens Olympics and decided to stage a marathon of their own, the race has occurred during World Wars and even the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. But it was first postponed, then canceled last year, then postponed from the spring in 2021.
It's the first time the event hasn't been held in April as part of the Patriots' Day holiday that commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War. To recognize Indigenous Peoples Day, race organizers honored 1936 and 1939 winner Ellison "Tarzan" Brown and three-time runner-up Patti Catalando Dillon, a member of the Mi'kmaq tribe.
To manage the spread of the coronavirus, runners had to show proof that they're vaccinated or test negative for COVID-19. Organizers also re-engineered the start so runners in the recreational field of more than 18,000 weren't waiting around in crowded corrals for their wave to begin; instead, once they get off the bus in Hopkinton they can go.
Police were visible all along the course as authorities vowed to remain vigilant eight years after the bombings that killed three spectators and maimed hundreds of others on Boylston Street near the Back Bay finish line.
But the crowds lining the course as it wends through eight cities and towns were expected to be smaller. Wellesley College students have been told not to kiss the runners as they pass the school's iconic "scream tunnel" near the halfway mark.
Additional reporting by the Associated Press.
