Back to Manhattan

Rod Dixon to run New York 25 years after historic win

It was one of the seminal moments in the first wave of the running boom, one that played a huge role in the initial surge of marathon running.

When Rod Dixon passed Geoff Smith in the final 400 meters of the 1983 New York City Marathon en route to a historic victory, it was instantly recognized as one of the greatest marathon duels in history. Twenty-five years later, people still talk about the dramatic finish, which saw Dixon cross the finish tape in 2:08:59, just nine seconds ahead of Smith.

At the finish, Dixon held his arms skyward and then dropped to his knees, while Smith crumbled to the ground.

“People ask if that was rehearsed,” recalls Dixon, a native of New Zealand who lives near Los Angeles. “I’ve said, ‘No, that’s just how it happened.’ I thanked the earth and the sky and the spirit or whoever’s up there, and then turned around and looked for Smithy, because he’s the one that made that race. But he was already off to the medical tent.”

The win in New York City galvanized Dixon’s career and forever put him near the forefront of any discussion about the most versatile runners in history. Dixon started out as a middle-distance runner, winning a bronze medal in the 1500m at the 1972 Olympics in Munich and finishing fourth in the 5,000m four years later in Montreal. He also earned two bronze medals at the world cross country championships and won some of the biggest road races in the U.S., including the Bay to Breakers 12K and the Falmouth 7-miler.

“Going to Munich and winning a medal and going back home to Nelson and 30,000 people giving me a ticker-tape parade, that was all part of wonderland,” says Dixon, who finished 10th in the Olympic Marathon in 1984. “But winning New York was the defining moment of my life. It was the first time I had really focused and gone out with a purpose and trained, and prepared mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually — everything.”

Dixon will be back in New York on Nov. 2 to celebrate the silver anniversary of his historic win. He’ll be honored by New York City Marathon executive director Mary Wittenberg — who credits the 1983 race for spurring her own passion for running — but he’ll also be there for another, much more personal, reason. He is running the race from Staten Island to Central Park for the first time since 1984 (when dehydration did him in), this time alongside his 28-year-old daughter, Emma, who spent last summer training in Australia.

Dixon turned 58 last summer, but he’s kept in good shape. So good, in fact, that he had hoped to make a run at the mile record in the 55-59 age group. That mark is 4:42 and change, while the best mile for a 58-year-old is 4:46. He was on the verge of giving it a go last summer, only to come up lame with a hamstring injury.

He’s been active in the running industry since he retired from elite racing in the late 1980s, organizing races, coaching runners, competing as a masters runner, serving as a corporate spokesperson and, most recently, building the Rod Dixon Kids’ Marathon mentoring program (fitbus.us) in schools in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and California.

“I’ve been passing on my enthusiasm since I retired [from racing],” he says. “I’m sharing it all because it’s all come to me from others and all of those who showed interest in me.”

For most of his career, Dixon says he wasn’t focused on running any specific distance, just racing almost every weekend for about nine months of the year from 1500m to 15K. In fact, he says he never fancied himself a marathoner, although his Arthur Lydiard-based training showed him otherwise when he won the 1982 Auckland Marathon (his first) in 2:11:21.

“And what that taught me was that, after all those years of long training runs, I was already marathon-trained,” he says. “Even though I had raced at 1500m, 5,000m and cross country for all those years, I still had the basic Lydiard principles of training, which gave me the aerobic base of marathon-type training.”

After watching Alberto Salazar outduel Rodolfo Gomez on the streets of New York that fall, Dixon cut back on his racing the following spring and summer and immersed himself in marathon training. He watched video tapes and read books and articles about all of the great marathoners in history and paid more attention to nutrition, recovery, rest and other details.

“Suddenly, it was almost like a religious experience,” he says. “I certainly realized what it took to run the marathon, but I realized that if you want to run fast and if you want to run with the world’s best, you have to train like you’ve never trained before. And I did.”