Disqualified Runner but Unqualified Success

More than 40,000 fitness buffs and masochists took to the streets Sunday by way of feet, bicycles, wheelchairs and skates for the biggest Los Angeles Marathon in its 12-year history, but the festivities were marred when the first female runner to reach the finish line was stripped of her gold medal for allegedly taking a short cut.

Russian runner Nadezhda Ilyina’s explanation: She had to use the bathroom at a convenience store, forcing her to veer off the main route.

But marathon organizers weren’t buying it, and they named Lornah Kiplagat of Kenya the winner of the women’s division in a time of 2:33:50, while El-Maati Chaham of Morocco took the men’s title at 2:14:16.

Marathon President William Burke was unfazed by the strange turn of events over Ilyina’s disqualification. ‘There’s no question that this controversy will be part of the history of marathon No. 12,” he acknowledged, “but it will also be remembered for roller-blading, for the circus of the day . . . and for all the faces of Los Angeles that we saw out there.”

The faces were many, as competitors from around the world--some pushing strollers, others sporting painted chests, still others sighted in Elvis and Zorro costumes--took part in six separate races for runners, walkers, bikers, wheelchair riders and in-line skaters. The skating event, held for the first time in the local marathon, rolled smoothly despite some criticism from purists.

In a city where the car is king, competitors relished their annual chance to carve out a niche all their own, racing down the middle of usually car-clogged thoroughfares such as Figueroa Street and Crenshaw and Sunset boulevards without a gas-guzzler in sight. The course was partly rerouted this year to flatten the last stretch after runners complained about a nasty uphill finale last year. Motorists, meanwhile, faced numerous roadblocks and traffic jams unusual for a Sunday morning, particularly close to downtown Los Angeles.

The biggest and most prominent event, of course, was the 26.2-mile run. Such events are inspired by a Greek messenger who in 490 B.C. reputedly ran nearly the same distance to deliver news of a victory at the battle of Marathon, then promptly collapsed and died.

Many of Sunday’s rank-and-file runners knew the feeling by the time they were done.

“My goal was survival,” said first-time marathoner Sonya Patton, 24, of Santa Cruz, who chugged past the finish line in under 3 1/2 hours to chants of “Go girl!” from the crowd.

The runners--two short of the 20,000 mark--surged away from the starting line at 6th and Figueroa streets about 8:45 a.m. amid a sea of balloons, flags, colorful caps and other festive adornments, their first steps pounding the pavement to the anthem of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.”

The masses harbored no illusions of taking home the $15,000 prize money or the Hondas that were accorded the winners. “Just to finish--that’s the goal,” said Manuel Deanda, 56, who came from Indiana with his wife to run the marathon and visit family.

“I accuse both my boys of being masochists,” Richard Julian of Spanish Fork said as he rooted for his sons from the sidelines. “They lose toenails. They get blisters on the bottoms of their feet so they can hardly walk. But when I ask [why they do it], they just look at me and say they’d rather finish last than sit up in the grandstands like their old man.”

Tenth-grader Ernesto Castaneda of San Fernando hurt his ankle in the eighth mile and thought about stopping. “But I just kept going. I just said, ‘Nah, there’s no way they’re gonna get me out of here. I’m going to finish,’ ” he said.

And he did--in just over three hours, finishing among the leaders from the Students Run Los Angeles, which preps lower-income and at-risk youngsters for the big race.

“That’s the story--500 kids [from the program] who think they can run 26 miles and, you know what, about every one of them will finish,” said County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, wife of the marathon president.

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Another group of teenagers from the county’s probation camps braved the course as well, and probation officer Phil Egans was there to greet them. “This gives the kids something to shoot for. This is the first time a lot of them have started something and finished it,” he said.

Bonded by their common drive to finish the race, many of the competitors held distinctly personal motives for throwing themselves into the marathon.

There was 47-year-old Sharon Grant of Malibu Canyon, whose mother passed away last week. “I was running for her. She’d have wanted me to do it,” said Grant, who finished in under four hours. While others headed for Jacuzzis after the race, she planned to see her minister.

There was Ana Fragoso of Glendale, still bitter over being a spectator in last year’s race and trying in vain to find her marathoner mother. “I said ‘no more of that,’ so this year I’m running,” she said, arm in arm with her mother as they awaited the starting gun.

There was Tom Arbuckle, 65, an avid marathoner who was intent on proving that he could come back from a knee injury in a motor scooter accident. “After this is over, we’re going to drive to friends’ house in Norwalk and hop in the hot tub,” the Walnut Creek man said. “I’ll barely be able to bend my legs to get in the car. But we’re going.”

There was Melody Moore, who carried a tape player to record the event for a blind friend. There were the many competitors who collected sponsors for charities, and the 26 children from a local bereavement program, each running a mile in memory of a recently deceased family member.

And there were even the Running Elvises, guzzling beer and pretzels the whole way.

“It’s always incredible for me to see the city come together like this,” said Mayor Richard Riordan. “It’s like a giant block party.”

The mayor first rode in the bicycle event and then officiated at the runners’ starting line. In what amounted to free nationwide television advertising for Los Angeles winter, the weather cooperated with camera-perfect skies and temperatures reaching to the 60s.

Throngs of onlookers--up to a million, according to the marathon’s estimate--lined the route to see the competitors. At the front and end portions, the crowd was five rows deep; in other neighborhoods, it thinned out significantly. But many seemed grateful that they weren’t the ones sweating it out on the course.

“Me? I’d never run this race,” said Moritz Weibel of Silverlake as he waited for his sister. “It looks like torture.”

“Look at the muscles in the legs of those guys,” said Jack Vaughn, an ex-Marine who watched the race pass near mile marker 21 in Silverlake. “You look at some of these people and you can see their legs are kind of wobbly, but they’re strong, all of them.”

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Liz Perea let three students from her visually impaired class at Foothills Middle School camp out on the sidewalk for the start of this year’s race, but she was already prepping them for a different role in 1998. “If I have anything to do with it, these guys will be doing the marathon themselves next year,” she said.

A tearful Janielle Marchand nearly fell over the barrier that separated her from the course as she saw her husband, Ludovic, cruise by at the finish of the wheelchair race. “There he is, there he is!” she said, scrambling to get a photo.

Her 32-year-old husband, a competitive bodybuilder paralyzed 13 years ago in a car accident, had never participated in a wheelchair marathon before but decided just a few weeks ago to give it a try. “He just said, ‘I’m going to do it.’ I know that my husband will do anything he wants to do.”

On the bike tour, about 13,000 bikers shrugged off the 46-degree weather for the 6 a.m. start at Universal Studios, as children pedaled earnestly to keep up with the adults.

Some rode sleek machines while others, children and adults, clanged from the starting line in rusty chained models, missing all but the baseball cards between the spokes.

Carlos Aguilar, 40, a sometimes professional cyclist, finished in about 62 minutes, the unofficial winner of the bike tour, which was not officially timed.

Aguilar said the tour was difficult, especially up the hills leading to the Universal Studios finish line. But the 10-year pro, who rides 1,000 miles a week, said he had energy to spare. “Maybe after this I’ll go ride a few more miles at Griffith Park,” said the South-Central Los Angeles resident atop his $2,000 Italian touring machine, wearing the copper bike tour medallion given to all competitors.

About 20 minutes behind him was Mayor Riordan, an avid biker who figures he finished in the top 300 or so competitors. But, he deadpanned, “I disqualified all of the ones in front of me.”

Times staff writers John M. Gonzales and Jim Hodges contributed to this story.

* BLADE RUNNERS

First in-line skating event draws 2,000 contenders. B1

* BAD TIME TO STOP

Nadezhda Ilyina says she left course to use a bathroom, but is disqualified. C1