Forums >General Running>Bay to Breakers ('86 race)
Today's the Bay to Breakers race so I searched TV listings for the B2B to watch it (of course it's not being televised live here in the Bay Area - boooo!). I did find an interesting video of the 1986 race (won by Ed Eyestone, last American to win it). Many will find this boring but I love old race footage and videos, the quality on this one is pretty good.
Awesome 80's hairstyles with headbands and shoulder pads (Diana Nyad is one of the hosts - holy carp does she look all 80's!).
Really great footage of Joan Benoit-Samuelson battling Greta Waitz throughout the video.
Ibrahim Hussein (won the previous two B2Bs)
Ed Eyestone
Mark Curp
Rod Dixon
Some more interesting things on the video:
- Ed Eyestone breaking the race open on the Hayes St. Hill (17:45), Greta and Joan running the hill (19:20). They Hayes hill is where both races (men and women) were won.
- A piece about how many runners actually run the race. Stanford nerds (engineering students) method vs Cal nerds estimate. They're working on an Apple Macintos. (~20:50 into the video)
- Running form analysis (~24:20)
- various places through the video showing Greta and Joannie racing and the Asics Aggies centipede matching them the entire race.
75th Bay to Breakers
Having run Bay to Breakers that year, watching this was somewhat surreal. Thanks for the link!!
just watched B2B video & did not find it boring at all! I lived in N.calif (closer to Oregon border) & consider Bay Area still a major part of my life. Recognized many of those buildlings/streets & remember almost all of those KPIX reporters especially Wayne Walker. Of course Greta Waitz & Joan Benoit two of the all time greatest female athletes. thanks for posting the link, & now I need to get something done around the house.
Wow, very cool. Thanks for posting that!
Ed Eyestone was doing the TV coverage in 2012, the first year I ran. He even commented on my, uh, costume.
Bacon Party!
Ha! That was terrific!
Liz
pace sera, sera
Oh my – thank you so much for posting that, it was great! An incredible amount of coverage. Seriously, they had, what, a dozen reporters on it? People who were knowledgeable about running, knew who had done what at previous races – really impressive. Is there any tv coverage of it now? Probably just a webcast where they put up some Tweets to run alongside. Get off my lawn!
I agree it was great seeing so many familiar local news personalities. Doug McConnell! Wendy Tokuda!
Right at the start there’s a shot of them running under the Embarcadero Freeway, which came down not much more than three years later after the Loma Prieta quake. Otherwise, so many things looked so much the same. (except: so many white guys in those engineering groups!)
Is there really only one water stop? And no one is carrying a fuel belt? (well, aside from those guys with the Niners hats) How ever did they run without collapsing?
The running form specialist who revealed that elites are faster because they take fewer steps was a nice 80s touch.
Anne - there is no live TV coverage of it nowadays. That's how I found it ... searching for a broadcast Sunday morning. What a difference in (almost) 30 years. So much effort was put into that coverage ... and in 2015 it wasn't televised at all! Just a blurb on the evening news about who won and the outlandish stuff going on at the race. I guess 'we' don't care about racing as much anymore. Get off my lawn, indeed!
Anne - there is no live TV coverage of it nowadays.
There was in 2012.
This was so much fun to watch, thanks for sharing!
Watched it all. This year on my trip to the Avenue of the Giants half, I continued on down highway 1 and spent a couple of days in SF. Took a long bike ride around town- it was great to see the streets in the video I had just been biking on. Good coverage of the event. Thanks for the post.
MTA: just realized I'm wearing a SF police shirt in photo- should have taken that along.