Pandemic leads to cancellation of Classic
Race organizers unable to find viable date in 2020 as pandemic forces cancellation
Unable to find another viable date in 2020 and with the growing uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus crisis, organizers of the Kiwanis Kingston Classic had no choice but to cancel this year’s event.
The race, a major fundraising event for the Kingston Kiwanis Club, was scheduled for Sunday, April 26.
“In our message to runners we did say that, obviously, this impacts our fundraising effort. If people want to donate to Kiwanis they can to keep programs going,” said Carlos Perez, co-Race Director with Ron Swart.
It marks only the second time the race has been canceled in its 39-year history. The event, which began in 1982, was canceled just two months before the 2010 event when the sponsorship group was unable to find a race director.
Organizers have tentatively scheduled the 38th Kingston Classic for April 25, 2021.
The decision was made during a conference call late last Wednesday. Registered runners were notified by email. A notice was placed on the Classic’s website during the weekend. Pre-registered runners will receive a re
fund except for a $2 service fee.
Uppermost in the organizers’ minds was the health and safety of runners, volunteers, first responders, spectators and sponsors.
“In consideration of this and guided by the Ulster County Executive’s Office and the direction of the Ulster County Health Department, we feel there is no way of determining how bad the crisis will be by the date of the Kiwanis Kingston Classic,” a statement read. “Therefore, we believe it is necessary to take all possible precautions to safeguard the health of the public and due to these issues, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the Kiwanis Kingston Classic.”
Some effort was made into moving the Classic, which has always been an April event, to the fall.
“We were initially thinking about trying to postpone it and do it in the fall. The reality of the situation is that with the waterfront area there’s something going on most every weekend down there,” Perez. “In the fall, with the cruise ships, they require the streets to be open. We know there’s a few different events down there and, obviously, you have the (Hudson River) Maritime Museum and the Trolley Museum (of New York).
“There was one weekend in October that we considered briefly,” Perez noted. “It looked kind of promising and we started asking around. We didn’t ask a ton, because we quickly realized we basically be creating a brand new race in three months.
“As we started looking at it. we were running into very few weekends where we could actually run the event. As a committee, it was decided that, for this year, it was not going to be at all feasible to have it at a later date and it just made more sense to just wait for 2021, unfortunately.”
In the aftermath, an idea considered for runners looking to get the Classic experience was by going virtual.
“A lot of these online training apps, like Strava, do those virtual runs,” Perez said. “The idea would be everybody would run the distance individually and then they would submit their run and then you would have a virtual leaderboard. That was also discussed.”