Flashes of Panic

The Boston marathon’s elite athlete apparatus has been making an effort, this year, to put at least the top athletes in varying uniforms. There was a horrible race some years ago when two major runner-sponsoring companies inadvertently (we hope) chose the same colors for the year’s uniforms, and the entire lead pack were in roughly identical uniforms. This year, the shoe companies and the marathons are cooperating to minimize the number of athletes with the same uniform. (This is an extension of the Marathon Majors program, in that London next weekend is arranging for the top dozen or so runners there to have actually unique uniforms which they will retain through the Majors cycle.)

There was a PDF distributed to the media a week or so ago, which may be making an appearance in the newspapers soon, which lists the male athletes with bib numbers one (defending champion Hailu Negussie) through twelve (Tanzanian journeyman John Yuda) and shows their uniforms. I printed several copies this morning, then as I rode the T into the city I cut them up and taped them to index cards with packing tape to make elite-athlete flash cards for my bike spotters. They don’t really need to know names, but if they can pick out the uniforms and that makes it easier to identify who’s in that big lead pack, so much the better.

I’m really hoping that some form of this PDF is printed for mass consumption, in color, perhaps in the Sunday Globe. In the meantime, if you have a color printer, here it is. I suggest printing two-up if you can. It goes a long way toward dispelling the myth that all East African marathoners are the same.