LetsRun.com wrote:
What makes it worse is they tried to sell it as a positive as they reduced the elite runners so much it's now equal to the wheelchair amount. In their press release announcing the development, they proudly proclaimed:
“Our move to equating the wheelchair racing division with the elite runner division across the Abbott World Marathon Majors Series competition is an important step for us as an organization. We want to champion all our elite athletes and by providing more prize money to our wheelchair division we hope this will help encourage others into the sport.”
Eventually there will need to be equal money for men, women, non-binary, wheelchair, master men, master women, and whatever other category they can come up with. Otherwise, it will be "discrimination." We are inching closer and closer to this while people stand idly by and say, "That will never happen, you're just exaggerating." Look at what happened at the Philadelphia Distance Run last year.
From The Wheelchair Foundation:
In the 34 developed countries it is estimated that 1% or 10,000,000 people require a wheelchair. In the 156 developing countries it is estimated that at least 2% or 121,800,000 people require a wheelchair. Overall, of the 7,091,500,000 people in the world, approximately 131,800,000 or 1.85% require a wheelchair.
Of this small number, a much smaller number compete in races. At Boston this year, there were 24,607 running finishers; there were 41 wheelchair finishers. To reflect the population percentage, there would have needed to be about 455 wheelchair finishers - less than one tenth of what the actual total was.
I wonder how long it will be before the NBA needs to take huge salary cuts so that the players in the WNBA get equal money?
I have mad respect for men and women who complete marathons in wheelchairs, especially when I see them climbing the hills at Boston. I always praise the ones I pass during any race I run. And they definitely deserve money for winning. But they do NOT deserve as much as the overall male and female winners.