NYC Marathon: Tatyana McFadden completes slam

Kelly Whiteside | USA TODAY Sports

NEW YORK – Now that Tatyana McFadden has completed an unprecedented Grand Slam sweep of the Boston, London, Chicago and New York marathons in a single year, she can put away her racing chair and take out the skis.

After winning the New York City Marathon on Sunday with ease, McFadden will return to school at the University of Illinois, take an exam, compete in a Nordic skiing World Cup race in early December, graduate (and give the graduation speech to her class), then head to national championships in January, and likely the Sochi Paralympics in February.

No wonder she's exhausted. A few runs on ice and snow will seem relaxing in comparison.

"What a great accomplishment," John Farra, the U.S. Paralympic director of Nordic skiing, said Sunday. Given her high level of fitness, strength and endurance from wheelchair racing, working on the technical skills needed to maneuver a Nordic sit ski will be the focus this season, Farra said.

McFadden is a quick study. After winning three gold medals in track and field at the London Paralympics, McFadden decided to give a new sport a try. She won a national cross country skiing sprint title after only a few days of training.

A trip to Russia for the Paralympics will have special meaning for McFadden, who was born with spina bifida and spent the first six years of her life in an orphanage in St. Petersburg.

Last year when McFadden visited her orphanage, she gave her gold medal from the 2010 New York City Marathon to the orphanage's director. "It was a good way to say thank you for keeping me safe for as long as possible and for keeping me alive as long as possible and a chance to show them how strong I am and the things I'm doing in life. It was an amazing experience," she said about the visit.

McFadden's success has resonated in the country of her birth. On Sunday her mother, Debbie, received messages from supporters in Russia who had watched an online feed of the race.

In the previous three times McFadden has competed in the New York race, only potholes could keep her from finishing first. In 2009 and 2011, flat tires led to sixth and third-place finishes. In 2010, her wheelchair tires survived the uneven streets and she blew away the field by almost six minutes.

On Sunday, nothing could stop McFadden, not the additional pressure of history or the bumps along the way. "If I flat, I flat," she told herself to calm the nerves. "I have time to change it since I was in the lead." This time, she didn't need the spare tire she straps onto her chair.

Considering McFadden's nearly four-minute lead, she could have changed a tire, given her chair a tune-up and still have won the race. It's been that kind of year for the 24-year-old from Clarksville, Md. McFadden hasn't lost a race all year. In addition to her four marathon victories, she won six golds in six different distances at world championships.

McFadden began her remarkable run in Boston on April 15, and ended it in New York, a race which served as a 26.2 mile tribute to Boston. Six months after two explosions near the Boston Marathon finish line killed three and injured more than 260, a record 50,740 runners gathered at the starting line at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island.

Blue and yellow Boston Marathon flags fluttered in the brisk 15 mph winds. Every runner was given a blue ribbon to pay tribute to Boston and a yellow line was painted alongside the traditional blue line heading into the homestretch.

There were other reminders of Boston as well, with an unprecedented level of security surrounding the race. Even so, runners said the heightened measures, especially at the finish line, didn't affect the race.

"For me, I was not fearing anything," said Kenya's Geoffrey Mutai, 32, who won the men's race in 2:08:24.

Ryan Vail, who was 13th and the first American male finisher, said he didn't feel "intruded upon at all by the security."

Mary Wittenberg, president of the New York Road Runners, said the increased security is "our new reality." She also said there were "zero incidents, zero threats."

In the end, the boisterous crowd , not the hundreds of police officers who lined the route, is what runners noticed most. "The crowd, they really helped me a lot because they were cheering, joyful, and also they were helping me, telling me, you are closing the gap. Go, go, go, move," said Kenya's Priscah Jeptoo who won the women's race after passing Ethiopia's Buzunesh Deba just before mile 24.