Over this past week, the topic of the ING New York City Marathon on Twitter went from tweets about race preparation, to rating the decision of the officials and NYC Mayor Micahel Bloomberg to cancel or continue the event.
If you look at the timeline of tweets on Twitter mentioning the ING/ NYC Marathon, you can see the change in attitude about the event, as you could see the change in weather conditions as Hurricane Sandy engulfed the east coast of the United States. Like a storm coming, the tweets evolved from discussion of Lance Armstrong’s potential ban from the event’s results,to speculation about whether or not the weather would have an affect on the largest marathon (in terms of participants) in the nation.
Then the storm hit, devastating the area and raising the question of whether the race would still take place or not. On October 30, 5 days before the race would start, Mayor Bloomberg and the officials of the race decided to continue with the event.
This announcement became a topic of opinion sharing on Twitter, under the topic “New York Marathon.” ESPN 2’s “Outside the Lines” program even held a discussion Thursday, asking viewers and followers to tweet to them their opinions, using the hashtag #marathondecision, on if the race should continue, and was met with rather mixed reactions. While some said that the race would be a good opportunity for the city to raise money, the majority seems to feel that the utilization of resources for the race rather than putting all of them to aiding hurricane victims is just awful.
Due to such criticism, the Mayor was influenced by the public to reverse his decision. Late Friday night, it was breaking news that the New York City ING marathon was cancelled, and was met with praise by many on the social networking site.
The latest ING NYC Marathon discussions on Twitter, are now that the officials waited too long in cancelling the race, and that runners that were registered to race tomorrow are taking this opportunity to volunteer their resources and their endurance to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Of course some disgruntled runners were to be expected, but it is nice to see a positive end to all of this.
Was the right decision made or not? Feel free to leave your comments below.
NYC biggest concern weather.