Today marks the 44th running of the Honolulu Marathon, a race that has grown from a small community event founded on the idea of good health through long-distance training to the world’s largest destination marathon and a $100 million economic engine for the state.
For longtime Oahu residents, the race unfolds much the same every year.
It begins along Ala Moana Boulevard with a deafening volley of fireworks that sets loose more than 20,000 runners and sends startled birds flapping into the pre-dawn darkness. For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, residents of East Honolulu find themselves locked in by a steady flow of runners, roughly two-thirds of them from Japan.
The swiftest of the field, usually from Kenya or Ethiopia, typically completes the 26.2-mile course in roughly the same amount of time it takes to get to the credits of a Hallmark Christmas movie. Athletes of lesser ability are easily spotted limping around town for days afterward.
But while the annual spectacle of the Honolulu Marathon might be familiar, there is much about the race’s long and colorful history that has passed into obscurity.
Here, then, is a brief primer on the race and the whirl of incident and activity that attends it each year.
THE FOUNDING VISION
Despite claims by the Honolulu Marathon Association in recent years that the race was founded on the suggestion of then-Mayor Frank Fasi, ample archival evidence upholds the race’s long-held origin story that it was Dr. Jack Scaff who initiated plans for the first Honolulu Marathon.
He and fellow cardiologist John Wagner had been looking to prove that long-distance running was healthful for cardiac patients, a radical idea at the time. That year, Scaff traveled to Boston to run the Boston Marathon and met pathologist Thomas Bassler, who encouraged Scaff to start a Honolulu marathon.
Upon returning to Honolulu, Scaff did just that, soliciting the partnership of the Mid-Pacific Road Runners Club, which agreed to schedule the race in place of its traditional year-ending 50-mile run. The club then solicited the support of Fasi, who was eager to prove that Honolulu civic life was on par with that of the best cities on the mainland.
Challenging the organizers to establish a “Boston Marathon of the Pacific,” Fasi pledged the aid of the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.
MODEST PURSE
The first Honolulu Marathon, dually marketed as “the Rim of the Pacific Run,” was a strictly amateur affair. Some 151 runners finished the 1973 race, led by Honolulu medical student and future Olympian Duncan McDonald, who would go on to win the race two more times. For his efforts, McDonald was rewarded with a koa bowl and a beer that someone handed him while he waited to take a urine test.
As Honolulu Advertiser reporter Ben Kalb later observed, only two people earned any money that day: Myles Saulibio, a University of Hawaii student who raised $300 in charitable pledges, and Hilo College student Johnny Notch, who found a dollar on the course.
Today runners will compete for a share of a $150,000 prize purse, with $40,000 going to both the men’s and women’s winners.
A LONG, MOSTLY FORGOTTEN HISTORY
The first marathon in Hawaii was staged March 21, 1909, 13 years after the sport was introduced at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens and just nine months after the standard 26.2-mile distance was established at the London games.
Nigel Jackson won the race, which stretched from Aala Park to the Haleiwa Hotel, despite being kicked by a horse a couple of miles from the finish.
Hawaii continued to be a hotbed of marathon racing for the next several years as barnstorming competitors from the mainland challenged local favorites like Antone Kaoo and “Charlie the Chinaman” in small-field competitions that generated intense gambling activity.
These vice-heavy races eventually gave way to amateur competition under the auspices of the Amateur Athletic Union, which sponsored the on-again, off-again Hawaiian AAU Marathon. That race was briefly administered by the Mid-Pacific Road Runners Club before it was relocated to Maui as the Maui Marathon.
TOLD YA SO
In 1984 newly appointed co-chairman of the Invited Runners Committee Jon Cross took what was then considered a significant gamble by recruiting promising middle-distance runners James Munyala from Kenya and Ibrahim Kivina of Tanzania to run in the Honolulu Marathon.
Cross, a standout collegiate runner who grew up idolizing Ethiopian Olympic marathon champions Abebe Bikila and Mamo Wolde, had faith that African runners could excel in the marathon, but Munyala and Kivina both dropped out without finishing.
Afterward, according to Cross, Honolulu Marathon Association President Gary Murfin chided him, saying that he was wasting his time with the African runners because they weren’t capable of excelling at that distance.
Cross doubled down the following year by inviting Simeon Kigen of Kenya, Zack Barie and Filbert Bayi of Tanzania, and a young up-and-comer from Kenya named Ibrahim Hussein.
Hussein wound up shattering the course record with a finish time of 2 hours, 12 minutes, 8 seconds.
An eventual three-time Honolulu Marathon champion, Hussein would go on win the Boston Marathon three times and the New York Marathon once, helping to usher in the age of African dominance in the marathon.
A MATTER OF DEATH AND LIFE
In 1982, 62-year-old Bob Johnson of Waikiki collapsed after completing the marathon and later died, becoming the first casualty of the Honolulu Marathon. Overall, six people — five participants and one volunteer — have died during or immediately after the race. Only five of them are still dead.
In 2006, 39-year-old Japanese runner Koji Takano collapsed and “died” (no pulse or respiration) at the finish line. He was quickly revived with two powerful shocks from a portable defibrillator. After spending the night in a hospital, Takano returned to Kapiolani Park the following day to pick up his finisher’s certificate.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser staff writer Michael Tsai has run 17 marathons and ultramarathons, including eight Honolulu Marathons — “all very slowly.” This article was excerpted from his new book, “The People’s Race Inc.: Behind the Scenes at the Honolulu Marathon” (University of Hawaii Press, $19.99). For more information visit MikeTsaiHawaii.squarespace.com.