Latest news with #NewYorkCityMarathon
Business Wire
22-07-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
David D'Alessandro Joins IDC as Chairman of the Board
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--International Data Corporation (IDC), the trusted technology intelligence leader, today announced the appointment of David D'Alessandro as Chairman of its Board of Directors. A seasoned executive with a career spanning financial services, sports, and entertainment, D'Alessandro brings a legacy of leadership grounded in brand transformation, operational rigor, and ethical governance. IDC, the trusted technology intelligence leader, today announced the appointment of David D'Alessandro as Chairman of its Board of Directors. Share He succeeds Steve Singh, who will continue to serve as a director on the Board. Singh, the former Chairman and CEO of Concur and a former Member of the Executive Board of SAP, recently stepped into the role of interim CEO at Spotnana. 'David is a strategist, a brand visionary, and a respected leader who understands the power of data to drive meaningful outcomes,' said Genevieve Juillard, CEO of IDC. 'His experience leading through complex market transitions and advising organizations through transformation will be invaluable as IDC continues its path of innovation and growth." D'Alessandro spent two decades at John Hancock, where he rose from marketing executive to Chairman and CEO. He led the company through a high-profile IPO and its subsequent merger with Manulife Financial. Under his leadership, John Hancock became a globally recognized sponsor of events like the Boston Marathon, the New York City Marathon, and the Olympic Games. He later served as Chairman and CEO of SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment and held a seat on Major League Baseball's Special Task Force on the 21st Century. D'Alessandro currently serves as Chairman of Encore Event Technologies. D'Alessandro is also the author of three best-selling books on leadership and ethics in business: Brand Warfare, Career Warfare, and Executive Warfare. He owns Toscano restaurants in Boston and Cambridge and remains a strong voice on corporate responsibility and performance. 'IDC is entering an exciting new chapter,' said D'Alessandro. 'The strategic divestment of Foundry — completed in March 2025 — frees up capital and focus for IDC's core strength: delivering sharp, data-driven technology intelligence. This transition positions us to double down on innovation and AI-powered insights that empower businesses to navigate complex market shifts with confidence.' D'Alessandro joins a board committed to supporting IDC's mission to deliver trusted tech intelligence that illuminates the path forward for technology buyers and suppliers worldwide. About IDC International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is the world's leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights.
Time of India
18-07-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
41st anniversary of The Times of India, Bengaluru: Running with the tide
By: Reeth Devaiah Over the past decade, marathons have surged in popularity, transforming from niche athletic events into mainstream phenomena embraced by millions around the globe. Cities are now known not only for their skyscrapers and heavy traffic but also for their marathon race routes. Alongside this boom, local running clubs have experienced unprecedented growth, becoming vital hubs for fitness, friendship, and mental wellness. Together, these trends have reshaped how city dwellers engage with their health and environment. Reeth Devaiah You Can Also Check: Bengaluru AQI | Weather in Bengaluru | Bank Holidays in Bengaluru | Public Holidays in Bengaluru In the early 2010s, marathons were largely reserved for elite athletes and highly dedicated runners. While prestigious events like Boston Marathon and New York City Marathon already existed, participation was limited, and public interest moderate. Fast-forward to the mid-2020s, and marathons now attract participants from all walks of life — from first-time runners and senior citizens to corporate teams and charity-driven participants. One significant reason for this rise in popularity is accessibility. With better training apps, personalized coaching, and widespread health awareness, completing a marathon has become an achievable bucket-list item for many. The introduction of shorter races—such as 5Ks, 10Ks, and half-marathons—within marathon events has also helped ease newcomers into the sport. The emphasis has shifted from 'winning the race' to 'finishing the race,' making marathons more inclusive. Social media has played a crucial role as well. Completing a marathon is now seen as a badge of honour, proudly displayed on Instagram and Facebook. The visibility of these accomplishments inspires others to begin their running journeys, creating a ripple effect throughout communities. According to industry reports, the number of organized road races globally has grown by over 20% in the last decade. In some metropolitan areas, marathon weekends attract tens of thousands of participants and spectators, boosting local economies and reinforcing the cultural significance of these events. Running clubs Complementing the marathon boom is the exponential rise of running clubs, particularly in urban centres. What began as small, informal gatherings of joggers in city parks has evolved into structured organizations with hundreds of members. These clubs serve as both training grounds and social networks, providing support, guidance, and motivation. In cities around the world, running clubs are not only promoting fitness but also combating urban isolation. In an age where digital connection often replaces in-person interaction, running clubs bring people together physically and emotionally. Weekly runs, community events, fitness challenges, and post-run social gatherings create a sense of belonging and accountability that solo workouts cannot match. Many clubs adopt specifi c missions. Some focus on beginners, offering couch-to5K programmes, while others cater to more competitive runners. There are niche groups, such as women-only clubs, LGBTQ+ inclusive runners, and eco-conscious running groups that practice 'plogging', which involves picking up trash while jogging. Newer formations are the Gen Z running clubs, which prefer earlymorning runs followed by coffee shop meet-ups instead of late-night outings at clubs and bars. In Bengaluru, there are visually impaired runners supported by guide runners, as well as children affected by HIV who are embraced into the mainstream. Recently, corporate run clubs have emerged, allowing colleagues to train together on campus and support one another in physical and mental performance. The growth of these clubs has become a grassroots movement, democratizing fitness and transforming public spaces into playgrounds for community health. Marathons as cultural and civic events Marathons have evolved beyond mere sporting contests to become cultural celebrations. These events often include music, food trucks, art installations, and cheer zones. They are scheduled to coincide with city festivals, national holidays, or global awareness days, creating synergy between physical wellness and civic pride. Marathons often serve as fundraisers for causes ranging from cancer research and child welfare to climate change. It's common for runners to participate as charity representatives, raising thousands of rupees in pledges. These events also stimulate the local economy. Hotel bookings, restaurant visits, transportation services, and retail sales spike around marathon weekends. The influx of out-of-town participants turns local marathons into tourist attractions, while media coverage shines a light on the cities involved. Technology has played a crucial role in making marathons and running clubs more accessible and engaging. GPS watches, smartphone apps, virtual coaching, and social tracking tools have transformed training from a solitary grind into a shared experience. Apps allow runners to set goals, join virtual challenges, compare statistics, and even run races remotely — a concept that gained popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic and has persisted due to its convenience and accessibility. Health benefits and mental wellness The marathon and running club phenomenon has significantly improved public health. Regular running is linked to numerous physical benefits, such as weight management, improved cardiovascular health, stronger bones, and enhanced immunity. However, the benefits to mental health are just as important. Running reduces stress, boosts mood, and helps combat anxiety and depression. The consistent training routine, the endorphin release from exercising, and the community support from running clubs contribute to better mental wellness. In a world increasingly aware of burnout and mental fatigue, running offers a simple yet powerful solution. Running clubs provide safe spaces where members can connect, share their struggles, and celebrate achievements without fear of judgment. Despite these positives, the marathon and running club ecosystem faces challenges. Issues such as overcrowded races, rising entry fees, and environmental concerns have drawn criticism. Cities need to adapt their infrastructure to support this growing activity. Safe sidewalks, dedicated running trails, and green spaces are crucial for maintaining momentum. Partnerships between government bodies and organizers of marathons and running clubs can help integrate fitness into urban planning. Looking ahead, the emphasis is likely to broaden from just running races to fostering a more comprehensive culture of movement. Hybrid events that combine cycling, swimming, yoga, and meditation are already gaining popularity. Nonetheless, the fundamental appeal of running — its simplicity, accessibility, and transformative power — will endure. The past decade has seen a remarkable transformation in how people perceive running. What was once viewed as an individual endurance challenge has evolved into a shared cultural movement. Marathons now unite cities, while running clubs weave together the fabric of urban communities. As individuals seek meaning, connection, and health in the fast-paced modern world, the running boom provides all three — one stride at a time. (Writer is an international athlete and Arjuna awardee, who promotes fitness and active lifestyles)
Miami Herald
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Mark Consuelos Makes ‘Live' Producer Michael Gelman Cry During On-Air Segment
Watching any live sporting event has the potential to trigger an unexpectedly emotional response, whether it's the closing moments of the Super Bowl or the final inning of the World Series. With a backstage producer at Live with Kelly & Mark, it turns out said sporting event takes the form of the famed New York City Marathon, as humorously revealed by Mark Consuelos during a recent episode of the show. During Tuesday's episode of Live, the 54-year-old Consuelos offered up a scientific breakdown of why certain individuals (participants and spectators alike) tend to well up during the New York City Marathon. "I don't know, I'd be crying after the beginning, the first quarter, the half," Consuelos quipped. He then turned his attention to Live producer Michael Gelman, who the former All My Children actor quoted as saying "he often cries watching them." As the camera jumped to Gelman, the television producer responded by confirming he does indeed tend to cry during the final stretch of the Marathon, saying, "I get very emotional at the end." "And I'm saying, you need to get your testosterone checked," Consuelos joked. Further elaborating on his answer, Gelman went to say, "It's very moving, that these people have gone through that. Sometimes they're disabled, sometimes they're crawling, but even sometimes they just went through so much and they're stumbling across the finish line, it's such an achievement." Studying Gelman's face as he said this, Consuelos promptly pointed out, "He's crying right now. You're welling up right now, get a close-up on Gelman's misty eyes." "You could be an actor, maybe," Consuelos continued with a laugh. "A soap opera actor. Summon up the tears!" Seizing upon the moment, Gelman clapped back with saying he was unsure whether he's "an actor or psychopath," triggering a flurry of laughs from the audiences and both Consuelos and co-host Kelly Ripa. Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The New York City Marathon's real heroes finish after dark
Drive To Survive, the seminal Netflix docuseries which introduced a new generation to Formula One, also unleashed a wave of sports shows that swept across virtually every streaming platform. Many follow the same playbook, carefully painting a behind-the-scenes portrait of elite athletes pursuing greatness – from cyclists confronting the steepest climbs of the Tour de France and surfers hunting vast waves to tennis players vying for grand slams and track sprinters for medals. 'That's kind of boring,' Michael Ring says of the genre. 'It's just another guy who figured out what he was best at in middle school, and didn't go to high school with normal kids, and maybe went to college, and dropped out and became a millionaire tennis player.' Ring, 61, is among a handful of amateur runners who appear in Final Finishers, a new short film about the back of the New York City Marathon pack. Many hours after the winners cross the line each year, the sun goes down over Central Park, the crowds thin, and race organizers start to hand out glow sticks. Those still out on the course, working their way through the last few grueling miles in the dark, are drawn in by the hum of a party at the finish. Turning away from record breakers and podium chasers, the film celebrates everyday runners: those more likely to dwell on whether, rather than when, they will finish 26.2 miles. Extraordinary stories are not exclusively found at the front of the pack. Olympians including Meb Keflezighi, Conner Mantz, Clayton Young and Beverly Ramos were in the audience in June when Final Finishers premiered at the Tribeca Festival. 'Getting to the finish line, no matter how many hours it takes you, is life changing,' Keflezighi, who won the NYC Marathon in 2009 and Boston Marathon in 2014, tells the Guardian. 'Everybody has a story.' Take Ring. In 2014, he was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition. 'I went from fine to paralyzed in a couple of days,' he says. Over many months he slowly, but surely, progressed from a wheelchair to crutches, and then walked with a cane. In time he returned to running, too, with the help of ankle braces, and finished the 2017 NYC Marathon – the first of many post-recovery – in just under 10 hours. Increasingly, major marathons have moved to make sure runners who finish with such times are not overlooked. In London, for example, tailwalkers set out after the final starter begins the race, and the finish line stays open until midnight. Still, for those following such races, and the wider sport, much of the coverage remains pinned around those in the lead pack. The makers of Final Finishers are betting viewers will find runners far behind just as, if not more, inspiring. Runners featured in the film 'are the most relatable to so many people out there, who don't see themselves as a quote unquote runner,' said Rob Simmelkjaer, CEO of New York Road Runners, the organization behind the New York City Marathon. 'They can start to see themselves as runners in a way that watching someone win the marathon in two hours and five minutes is not going to make them feel they can be a runner. Because they know they can never do that.' Distribution plans for Final Finishers have yet to be announced. With another short film in the works, New York Road Runners recently launched East 89th St Productions, a production studio. It hopes to produce a docuseries, too. Will a streaming platform, or broadcaster, bite? The wave of professional-focused sport docuseries appears to have crested. The new series of Tour de France: Unchained on Netflix will be the last. Six Nations: Full Contact, also on Netflix, and Make or Break, an Apple series following World Surf League stars, have been canceled. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion But as it draws up its plans for films and series, New York Road Runners is not rushing to put more elite athletes on screen. This has, at least at first, caused a little confusion. 'As we went out and talked to a lot of production companies out there, there was a lot of that that came back to us. It was, 'Oh, well, you know, who are the stars?' and 'are you going to get [Eliud] Kipchoge?',' says Simmelkjaer. 'And we don't necessarily subscribe to that idea, that it has to be the stars.' 'We're definitely starting to see the tide changing,' claimed Martinus Evans, founder of Slow AF Run Club. 'I don't want to say it like this, but I'm gonna say it like this: people are not necessarily excited about elite athletes' stories. People are not excited about people who spent their life running, and they're expected to get first place.' A doctor who told Evans, 38, that he needed to lose weight laughed when said he wanted to run a marathon. 'Instead of punching the doctor like I wanted to, I bought running shoes that day,' he says in the film, which documents how he ultimately realized his goal, despite the doubters, and 'cried like a fucking baby' at the finish. 'What's more exciting, and what's a lot more interesting, is the underdog: somebody you did not expect to be out there,' Evans tells the Guardian. 'Somebody that you looked at and was like, 'Oh no, he's not going to run a marathon' – like me. But I ran eight of them. And I'm training for number nine.'
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The New York City Marathon's real heroes finish after dark
Drive To Survive, the seminal Netflix docuseries which introduced a new generation to Formula One, also unleashed a wave of sports shows that swept across virtually every streaming platform. Many follow the same playbook, carefully painting a behind-the-scenes portrait of elite athletes pursuing greatness – from cyclists confronting the steepest climbs of the Tour de France and surfers hunting vast waves to tennis players vying for grand slams and track sprinters for medals. 'That's kind of boring,' Michael Ring says of the genre. 'It's just another guy who figured out what he was best at in middle school, and didn't go to high school with normal kids, and maybe went to college, and dropped out and became a millionaire tennis player.' Ring, 61, is among a handful of amateur runners who appear in Final Finishers, a new short film about the back of the New York City Marathon pack. Many hours after the winners cross the line each year, the sun goes down over Central Park, the crowds thin, and race organizers start to hand out glow sticks. Those still out on the course, working their way through the last few grueling miles in the dark, are drawn in by the hum of a party at the finish. Turning away from record breakers and podium chasers, the film celebrates everyday runners: those more likely to dwell on whether, rather than when, they will finish 26.2 miles. Extraordinary stories are not exclusively found at the front of the pack. Olympians including Meb Keflezighi, Conner Mantz, Clayton Young and Beverly Ramos were in the audience in June when Final Finishers premiered at the Tribeca Festival. 'Getting to the finish line, no matter how many hours it takes you, is life changing,' Keflezighi, who won the NYC Marathon in 2009 and Boston Marathon in 2014, tells the Guardian. 'Everybody has a story.' Take Ring. In 2014, he was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition. 'I went from fine to paralyzed in a couple of days,' he says. Over many months he slowly, but surely, progressed from a wheelchair to crutches, and then walked with a cane. In time he returned to running, too, with the help of ankle braces, and finished the 2017 NYC Marathon – the first of many post-recovery – in just under 10 hours. Increasingly, major marathons have moved to make sure runners who finish with such times are not overlooked. In London, for example, tailwalkers set out after the final starter begins the race, and the finish line stays open until midnight. Still, for those following such races, and the wider sport, much of the coverage remains pinned around those in the lead pack. The makers of Final Finishers are betting viewers will find runners far behind just as, if not more, inspiring. Runners featured in the film 'are the most relatable to so many people out there, who don't see themselves as a quote unquote runner,' said Rob Simmelkjaer, CEO of New York Road Runners, the organization behind the New York City Marathon. 'They can start to see themselves as runners in a way that watching someone win the marathon in two hours and five minutes is not going to make them feel they can be a runner. Because they know they can never do that.' Distribution plans for Final Finishers have yet to be announced. With another short film in the works, New York Road Runners recently launched East 89th St Productions, a production studio. It hopes to produce a docuseries, too. Will a streaming platform, or broadcaster, bite? The wave of professional-focused sport docuseries appears to have crested. The new series of Tour de France: Unchained on Netflix will be the last. Six Nations: Full Contact, also on Netflix, and Make or Break, an Apple series following World Surf League stars, have been canceled. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion But as it draws up its plans for films and series, New York Road Runners is not rushing to put more elite athletes on screen. This has, at least at first, caused a little confusion. 'As we went out and talked to a lot of production companies out there, there was a lot of that that came back to us. It was, 'Oh, well, you know, who are the stars?' and 'are you going to get [Eliud] Kipchoge?',' says Simmelkjaer. 'And we don't necessarily subscribe to that idea, that it has to be the stars.' 'We're definitely starting to see the tide changing,' claimed Martinus Evans, founder of Slow AF Run Club. 'I don't want to say it like this, but I'm gonna say it like this: people are not necessarily excited about elite athletes' stories. People are not excited about people who spent their life running, and they're expected to get first place.' A doctor who told Evans, 38, that he needed to lose weight laughed when said he wanted to run a marathon. 'Instead of punching the doctor like I wanted to, I bought running shoes that day,' he says in the film, which documents how he ultimately realized his goal, despite the doubters, and 'cried like a fucking baby' at the finish. 'What's more exciting, and what's a lot more interesting, is the underdog: somebody you did not expect to be out there,' Evans tells the Guardian. 'Somebody that you looked at and was like, 'Oh no, he's not going to run a marathon' – like me. But I ran eight of them. And I'm training for number nine.'
