The Boston Marathon 2014 is live on Monday morning and the race is streaming live in the morning starting at around 9 am ET from TV and online from Universal Sports and UniversalSports.com and the coverage has the starting and finish line feeds and the event comes a year after the tragic bombing and the 26.2 mile race has plenty of security and over 30,000 runners participating and Meb Keflezighi is the first American winner in over 20 years.
This year will be the 118th running of the event and the race on Patriots Day on April 21 will be a somber and important day as the race starts off in Hopkinton and will finish in Copley Square in Boston after the bombing tragedy last year. The finish will be by the Boston Public Library and the beefed up security will be the new norm after what happened last season and the schedule is set up with different divisions going in order at various time intervals and it starts with the mobility impaired just before 9 am and then continues with wheelchair and handcycle participants.
After 9 am the elite women and men for the first wave will start the race and the rest will continue through 11:30 am ET and coverage will be on the main Boston Marathon website and on TV. The race will go through six different town areas in Boston and comes after the tragic bombing last year in 2013 that killed three people and injured over 200 and turned Boston into a police state for a hot minute and now there will be over 3,000 police officers at the event along with surveillance operations and plain clothes officers and there could be up to one million people watching the event.
Due to the nature of what happened last year, there will be multiple checkpoints around the spectator areas and security forces will be out and about throughout the day and there already was a hoax event by an artist during the week last Monday for the anniversary of the event. Backpacks are being looked at carefully and are discouraged and it comes after the bombing suspect pled not guilty to the charges against him and while there is security, officials are not expecting another attack on the event after what happened last year.
Lelisa Desisa has the distinction of being the last runner to win the event and his win was marred last year with the bombing and now he will look to win back to back marathons for the first time here since 2008 and he ran only three marathons last year and he also won in Dubai and was second at the world championships and he will be a favorite this year. The US has a number of top athletes participating in the event, including Ryan Hall, Abdi Abdirahman, Desiree Davila Linden and Shalane Flanagan, according to ESPN.com and they will be looking to represent after what happened last year. The live coverage will continue to the end of the race and times for each runner can be viewed on the marathon website.
