Former Boston race champ runs again for love of city

Boston: Amby Burfoot, the winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon, was unable to complete last year's race when two bombs ripped through the crowd at the finish line.

This year, the 67-year-old Burfoot is back, running in Monday's race as a sort of public love letter to the city and his favorite event. (Runners reclaim Boston Marathon one year after attacks)

"Thank you, Boston Marathon fans, for your 118 years of support for all runners, fast and slow alike. Without you, the Marathon wouldn't be the amazing race that we cherish so much," Burfoot wrote.

He has printed up 200 cards with his message and plans to hand it out to fans along the 26.2-mile course through the northeastern US city.

"I made 200 - I should have made 2,000," Burfoot told AFP in an interview.

"We know that it was the people of Boston - fans and spectators - who were killed last year, not the runners," he said. (Boston Marathon looks to shake shadow of deadly 2013 bombing)

"We all feel terribly about what happened to the people of Boston last year and we want to thank them this year for being so strong and for healing the city, and we want to be part of the healing process."

For Burfoot, Boston is a key part of his running career. Three years before his dream win, he made his race debut in Boston in 1965.

"That was 49 years ago and even then, I was a student of the marathon. I always knew I wanted to be a marathoner. For me, the Boston Marathon is the Holy Land - it's the place I've always wanted to be," he said.


'We wanted to reclaim the race'

In recent decades, Burfoot has come back every five years to run his favorite race.

On April 15, 2013, he was less than a mile from crossing the finish line when the pressure-cooker devices packed with metal fragments - allegedly made and placed by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev - exploded. (US seeking death penalty in marathon bombing)

"We didn't know what was happening at the point where we were stopped half a mile from the finish line. I was one of the 5,000 who were stopped and they just said, 'Go away'," Burfoot recalled.

He learned of the tragedy a few minutes later, when his terrified wife called, asking him to return immediately to their hotel.

"Personally I was not scared by the experience. We didn't see or hear anything," he said.

"But once we realized what happened, that the marathon had been disrupted in this horrific way, I think among the runners we were sure immediately that we wanted to come back this year. We wanted to reclaim the race for the runners, for the people of Boston."


Doing it for the fans

While Burfoot was keen to take on the 2014 race, his body was not so willing. He said he had to overcome serious health problems from October last year that left him in a deep depression.

"I was so sick I could not imagine that I would be able to run the Boston Marathon. But on January 3rd, I started to feel better. Every day since then, I've felt very good," explained Burfoot, a thin man with gray hair, glasses and a beard.

"My training is sufficient, it's not superlative. But it's my most exciting marathon ever."

Burfoot is running with Team MR8, in memory of eight-year-old Martin Richard, one of the three people killed in last year's attacks.

The team has about 100 runners, including several members of Burfoot's family including his wife, his brother, his brother-in-law and his future daughter-in-law.

Team MR8 has already raised nearly $1 million for a foundation that promotes education, athletics and community service.

While Burfoot, a native of neighboring Connecticut, considers the centenary Boston Marathon in 1996 "the greatest race in the history of the planet," he says he believes that Monday's race will be much more emotionally significant.

"The fans are the star attraction," said Burfoot. "We are 36,000 runners and we are lucky because we are going down the middle of a parade, with fans on both sides of the road. All of us, we feel so lucky that we are a part of this."

"At the end of the day, we all say Boston lives, Boston strong, Boston endures forever."