Steve Milton: Around the Bay: Some factoids about Hamilton’s oldest foot race
Race Factoids
- With Monday's relaxing of provincial and local restrictions, the race has a group start, with the 30K and first leg of the relays beginning at 9:30 a.m. at York Boulevard and Bay Street and the 5K starting at 9:45 a.m. on Bay Street in front of FirstOntario Centre. The races finish inside FirstOntario Centre.
- According to the race's official website, the five best places to watch the race are: near the corner of Victoria Avenue and Burlington Street at the 3.2K mark; the ramp from Burlington Street to Woodward Avenue North which is the first relay point; Beach Boulevard near the lift bridge; LaSalle Park in Burlington; and Dundurn Castle.
- At the 100th anniversary of the race, Burlington's Tersilla Komac, who had run the race unofficially, beginning in 1975, was given an honorary First Woman" trophy with bib number 1975. The ATB was not formally open to women competitors until 1979, but now there are always as many women competing as there are men.
- Runners and fans welcome the reopening of the Valley Inn Road bridge, so Heartbreak Hill," near the end of the race, can play its usual taxing physical and emotional role.
- Masks are not mandatory and, says race director Anna Lewis. We're following provincial guidelines. I think it's about common sense. If you don't feel comfortable, put on the mask. Outdoors you can create your own space and we encourage people to continue to give each other space."
- The most recent in-person Around the Bay was in 2019, which marked the ATB's 125th birthday and also the 40th anniversary of the first time women were allowed to officially race. The women's 30K winner was Mengistu Emebet, who'd moved from Ethiopia to Mississauga only a year earlier, and the men's race was won by Daniel Kemoi of Coon Rapids, Minnesota who beat his friend and 2017 champion, Panuel Mkungo.
- Because of the pandemic, the 2020 race was originally postponed from March to late November, but that September organizers cancelled it outright. It was the first time the ATB hadn't been run since 1962 when road construction forced organizers to skip that year.
- The 2021 live race was also cancelled, but about 2,200 runners competed virtually. They were given a one-month window to run a route of their own choosing with five choices of distance - two, 5, 10, 15 and 30K - and submit their best times.
- In that 2021 virtual race, 625 entrants competed in a new event called The Hammer,' running all five distances for combined times. That feature returns this year but the four shorter races are run virtually with the 30K done in person over the course route on Sunday.
- Because the race has been long sold out with the reduction of entries to about half of the normal nearly-10,000, there is a virtual 30K this year and runners have until Sunday to complete that and submit their times.
- In 1982, the course was officially certified as 30 kilometres long. Prior to that, most years it had been slightly longer at 19 miles and 168 yards (30.731K). But, it was marathon length (42.195K) in 1970 to function as the Pan Am Games Trials and from 1936 to 1945 it was 30.175K.
- The ATB is officially North America's oldest distance road race, started by the Hamilton Herald in 1894, three years before the Boston Marathon began. Hamilton's William Marshall was the first winner.
- Hamilton men won the first seven races and Hamilton's Jack Caffery, who won the ATB in 1900 followed it up by winning the 1900 Boston Marathon, with fellow Hamiltonians William Sherring and Fred Hughson second and third. Caffery won Boston again in 2001 and Sherring won the 1906 Olympic marathon.
- Six Nations legend Tom Longboat won the 1906 Hamilton race and took the Boston Marathon the following spring while Hamilton's James Duffy won two consecutive ATBs before winning Boston in 1914.
- Others who have won both in Hamilton and Boston include Sam Mellor and Mike Spring from New York, New Jersey's Frank Zuna, Quebec's Gerald Cote and Toronto's celebrated Jerome Drayton.
- Hamilton's Reid Coolsaet won the 2012 men's 30K, five months before his first Olympic marathon in London. Kate McNamara of Dundas won back-to-back women's titles in 2005-06.
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com