1981 Fifth Avenue Mile

The Record That Won't Go Away
By AIMEE BERG

Photo Credit: David Getlen/New York Road Runners

Sydney Maree leads the pack on the way to his record time of 3:47.52 in the 1981 Fifth Avenue Mile, a mark that still stands heading into Sunday's 30th running of the event.

Twenty-nine years ago this Sunday, a dozen of the world's greatest 
middle-distance runners chased Sydney Maree down Fifth Avenue on 
his way to a blistering 3-minute, 47.52-second mile—a course record 
that stands to this day.

The reason the record remains, according to some of the elite athletes 
who ran the inaugural race in 1981, is because back then, no one had any
 idea what they were doing.

They'd never run a straight mile on a street, and they had no sense of
 pacing. So they went all-out 'til they crashed.

"We just wanted to see how fast we could run in a straight line," 
said Ray Flynn, who placed fifth that year.

Once again, on Sunday, some of the world's best milers will take aim 
at Mr. Maree's time in the 30th running of the Fifth Avenue Mile.

The field will include Alan Webb, the American record-holder in the
 mile (3:46.91); Bernard Lagat, eight-time winner of the prestigious
 indoor Wanamaker mile who has run 3:47.28 outdoors; and Nick Willis 
of New Zealand, the 2008 Olympic silver medalist at 1,500 meters.

"Trust me, I'm hungry," Mr. Lagat said; yet he balked when asked if 
the record would fall.

Despite faster times on the track and more scientific training methods in 
the ensuing years, the 2010 field simply will not be as deep as it was in 
1981 when the mile was track and field's marquee event.

Today's runners are more familiar with the road mile and will try to conserve
 energy rather than sprint from the gun to the tape.

And while its effect may be negligible, a slight course change in 1998 
essentially eliminated two downhill blocks. That year, the course moved
 two blocks south, to its current start on 80th Street and finish on 60th Street.

Even if the improbable happens this weekend, Mr. Maree won't be in 
New York to witness it.

On Sunday, he will be 7,900 miles away in the Pretoria township of 
Atteridgeville, forbidden from traveling internationally.

In August 2008, Mr. Maree was sentenced to 10 years in prison—with
 five years suspended—for defrauding the National Empowerment Fund 
of almost 1 million Rand (approximately $142,500 U.S. at today's rate).

Maree had been the CEO in charge of reviving the flagging NEF, an 
organization created to support black business ventures and economic
 equality in South Africa.

Mr. Maree pleaded innocent to all the charges and, according to his 
lawyer, Titus Mchunu, maintains his innocence. "He had no intention
 to defraud, steal or prejudice anybody."

Mr. Maree has been out on bail since his 2005 arrest and is appealing 
the judgment.

During apartheid, Mr. Maree, who is black and was born in South Africa,
 competed for Villanova, and in 1984 gained U.S. citizenship at a time 
when South African athletes were banned from international competition 
and competitors feared sanctions if they ran against them.

As a result, during his prime, he was both discriminated against in his
 homeland and unable to compete freely outside it because many other 
nations were protesting South Africa's racial policy.

In separate interviews this month, Mr. Maree, 54, and his youngest son,
 Daniel, 23, spoke of that record day in New York running history and 
what transpired afterward.

In the summer of 1981, a year that marked the height of mile mania 
in Europe, Mr. Maree was having a superlative season. The president 
of the International Amateur Athletic Federation had determined
 that since Mr. Maree was married to an American woman and was 
applying for U.S. citizenship, he was under United States' athletic 
jurisdiction and cleared him to compete overseas.

In September, a month after Britain's Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett
 took turns lowering the world record in the mile three times, Mr. Maree
 beat Ovett in a one-mile race in Rieti, Italy, running lifetime best on the
 track: 3 minutes 48.83 seconds.

"I had trained very, very hard and was coming into my own," Mr. Maree said,
 so when he lined up at the foot of the Metropolitan Museum of Art just 17 
days later and waited for the start of the Fifth Avenue Mile against a field 
he called "fearless," he said, "I was possessed."

Two years after his historic victory that day in Manhattan, Mr. Maree
 lowered Mr. Ovett's 1,500-meter world record in August 1983, and 
the following May, Mr. Maree gained U.S. citizenship just in time to 
qualify for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Mr. Maree relinquished his berth in the 1,500 meters, however, when a
 pulled left hamstring refused to heal. Four years later, he represented 
the U.S. at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, and finished in fifth 
place in the 5,000 meters.

"South Africa received a lot of publicity," Mr. Maree said, as a result of 
him competing there while his homeland was banned from the Games 
until 1992. "It was nice for the youth of the country [to see that] given
 an opportunity, nothing is impossible."

Mr. Maree was often criticized for not speaking louder against apartheid,
 but he firmly believed that had he been more critical, he would not have
 been allowed to return to South Africa, and the way to effect change, he 
thought, was on the ground, person-to-person.

"Instead of calling for a revolution," his son Daniel said, "he called for steps."

Mr. Maree officially retired from competition in 1991, but agreed to run one
 last Fifth Avenue mile in 1992. He put his economics degree from Villanova
 to use and worked in the New York office of the international investment 
firm Fleming Martin, where he marketed investment opportunities
 in South Africa.

Mr. Maree had five children with his college sweetheart Lisa Rhoden, 
the American whom he married in 1980.

And in 1995, he transferred to Fleming Martin's Johannesburg office.

"When we went to South Africa in 1995, we all stopped running," said Daniel,
 except the youngest, Christina, who was 3 at the time (and is now a 
freshman on the University of South Florida's track and
 cross-country teams).

"Wherever we'd go in South Africa, we knew he was somehow famous 
but he was not very emotional about the challenges he faced. For me, 
I only learned in college about how he came to the U.S. and his records.

"It blew my mind what I didn't know about my dad," he said.

The summer before Daniel's senior year of high school, his parents had
 already separated and he was visiting his mother in the U.S., when he 
Googled his father's name and read about the accusations of fraud. "I 
was blown away," he said. "I think I was the first in my family to find out."

The Maree children stayed in the U.S. and started to lose touch with 
their father when he suspected that he was under close surveillance.

"You'd hear clicks when he'd call," Daniel said. "We'd hear voices, 
interference. It would hang up randomly. He stopped using his cell
 and email, so for two or three years we were in the dark."

Mr. Maree lost his job during the legal trouble, divorced in 2004, sold 
his car and much of his property in Johannesburg as the court fees
 mounted and, for a time, moved in with his mother in a house he 
had bought for her in the 1980s, while trying to support his brothers 
and sisters at the same time.

To ease his father's debt, Daniel, as an undergraduate at American 
University three or four years ago, started to send money home so 
his father could buy groceries.

He also began filming a documentary to chronicle his father's plight.

"One of the hardest parts for me is watching him deteriorate," 
Daniel said, "and yet he remains incredibly physically active."

Every day, Mr. Maree wakes up at 6 a.m. and runs 10 to 20 kilometers. 
On the road, he said, "I think about the same things as I used to: solve
 problems, analyze my life to date."

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