Bob Hall, the father of wheelchair racing and a 2-time winner of the Boston Marathon, dead at 74
BOSTON (AP) — Bob Hall, a childhood polio survivor who became known as the father of wheelchair racing after twice winning the Boston Marathon and then going on to build racing chairs for the generations of competitors that followed, has died. He was 74. The Boston Athletic Association said Hall's family confirmed his death on Sunday.
In 1975, Hall convinced Boston Marathon organizers to let him into the race and was promised a finishers’ certificate like the one the runners got if he completed the 26. 2-mile distance in under 3 hours. (In 1970, Vietnam War veteran Eugene Roberts, who had lost both of his legs in the war, needed more than six hours to finish.
) Hall crossed the line in 2:58. “It had nothing to do with, per se, the marathon, but it was about the inclusion,” Hall said last year, when he served as the grand marshal in Boston on the 50th anniversary of his pioneering ride. “It was that I was bringing people along.
” Hall returned to the Boston race in 1977, when it was designated as the site for the National Wheelchair Championship, and prevailed in a field of seven. As they crested Heartbreak Hill, eventual men's winner Bill Rodgers and fifth-place finisher Tom Fleming slowed to encourage him. “The interaction was a sign that we were fully accepted as athletes,” Hall said.
Hall, who lost the use of both legs from childhood polio, sued in 1978 to have wheelchair racers admitted into the New York Marathon, a fight that wasn’t settled until the race created men’s and women’s wheelchair divisions in 2000. “Bob Hall is an incredible man,” five-time Boston winner and eight-time Paralympic gold medalist Tatyana McFadden said last year. “I’m so thankful for him.