Fifty years later, Bob Hall's example -- and his racing wheelchairs -- are still going strong

BOSTON (AP) — Bob Hall and Bill Rodgers were teammates training for the 1975 Boston Marathon — Rodgers on his feet, and Hall in his wheelchair.

Rodgers would go on to win that year, the first of the four victories in his hometown race that earned him the nickname “Boston Billy” and set off a national running craze. But when he gave Hall’s wheelchair a try, he was outmatched.

“I tried to push myself in that chair. I couldn’t move,” Rodgers said this week. “But he had the eye of the tiger, Bob did.”

Fifty years later, the chairs are sleeker, the fields are bigger, and Hall’s successors are literally leading the way at the Boston Marathon: The push-rim wheelchair division will be the first to depart from Hopkinton on Monday morning, the better for them to avoid the much slower runners as the field makes its way to Boston’s Back Bay.

“Bob Hall is an incredible man,” five-time Boston winner and eight-time Paralympic gold medalist Tatyana McFadden said this week as she prepared for Monday's 129th edition of the race and 50th anniversary of Hall's pioneering push. “I’m so thankful for him. And I think we all are, as wheelchair racers, because he really paved the way.”

Vietnam veteran Eugene Roberts, who had lost both of his legs in the war, in 1970 became the first wheelchair athlete to complete the Boston Marathon course, finishing in a little over six hours. Hall talked his way into the field in ’75 race by promising race director Will Cloney he could do it in just three.

Hall, who survived childhood polio that cost him the use of his legs, covered the distance in 2 hours, 58 minutes. His prize: a certificate of achievement – just like the ones the runners got.

“It had nothing to do with, per se, the marathon, but it was about the inclusion,” said Hall, who is serving as the grand marshal of this year’s race with Rodgers on the 50th anniversary of their ’75 victories. “I didn’t care if anybody got on my coattails. It was that I was bringing people along.”

When he returned two years later, Hall led a field of seven men – and one woman – in a race that also served as the National Wheelchair Championships. On Monday, more than 40 men and women, many of them with paralympic and major marathon victories on their resumes, will leave Hopkinton ahead of a field of 30,000 runners, with the wheelchair winners expected on Boylston Street a mere 1 hour, 15 minutes or so later.

“Because of him crossing that finish line, we’re able to race today. And it’s evolved so much since then,” McFadden said. “It was him. It was him being brave and saying, ‘I’m going to go out and do this because I believe that we should be able to race Boston Marathon just like everyone else.’ So he had the courage to do that.”

McFadden didn't just follow Hall to the course: Her first racing chair, at the age of 7 or 8, was one of the youth-sized models that he designed and built for aspiring wheelchair athletes. Daniel Romanchuk, who has won Boston twice, and Marcel Hug, a seven-time winner and the defending champion, also got started on Bob Hall models.

“The chairs still hold up today,” McFadden said. “Eight-year-olds, 9-year-olds, are in that chair, and it’s still going strong. He’s also given back a lot too, in that way.”

The men's and women's wheelchair winners on Monday will claim top prizes of $50,000 from a purse of more than $250,000, with a possible $50,000 extra for a course record – the same bonus as the open divisions. There are also para divisions — with a total purse of $91,000 — for lower-limb, upper-limb, vision, coordination and intellectual impairment.

“Not because it’s a nice thing to do, but because these are elite athletes," said Cheri Blauwet, a paralympic gold medalist and two-time Boston winner who is now the chair of the Boston Athletic Association Board of Governors.

“And it’s important in terms of offering equitable elite sport opportunities to people of all types of mobility," she said. "But also, because it all comes back to our mission, which is to promote health through the sport of running and other sports opportunities.”

And it all started with Hall.

“We were leading edge at that time. And we’ve essentially maintained that philosophy for the for the subsequent decades," Blauwet said. “We’re always thinking about it. And, you know, we’re very competitive here — for obvious reasons. And we like to be competitive even in our progress towards inclusion.”

AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports

FILE - Daniel Romanchuk poses for photos after winning the men's wheelchair division of the New York City Marathon, Nov. 3, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

FILE - Tatyana McFadden of the U.S., celebrates before being informed she has been disqualified of the women's 400 m. T54 at the 2024 Paralympics, Sept. 5, 2024, in Paris. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla, File)

FILE - Cheri Blauwet, co-chair of the Boston 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Movement Committee, addresses reporters during a news conference by organizers of Boston's campaign for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Boston, Jan. 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

FILE - Four-time Boston Marathon winner, Bill Rodgers, speaks, as Boston Marathon wheelchair winner and pioneer, Bob Hall, listens at left, during a news conference in Boston, April 15, 2005. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

ANTALYA, Turkey (AP) — NATO foreign ministers on Thursday debated an American demand to massively ramp up defense investment to 5% of gross domestic product over the next 7 years, as the U.S. focuses on security challenges outside of Europe.

At talks in Antalya, Turkey, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that more investment and military equipment are needed to deal with the threat posed by Russia and terrorism, but also by China which has become the focus of U.S. concern.

“When it comes to the core defense spending, we need to do much, much more,” Rutte told reporters. He underlined that once the war in Ukraine is over, Russia could reconstitute its armed forces within 3-5 years.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio underlined that “the alliance is only as strong as its weakest link.” He insisted that the U.S. investment demand is about “spending money on the capabilities that are needed for the threats of the 21st century.”

The debate on defense spending is heating up ahead of a summit of U.S. President Donald Trump and his NATO counterparts in the Netherlands on June 24-25. It's a high-level gathering that will set the course for future European security, including that of Ukraine.

In 2023, as Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine entered its second year, NATO leaders agreed to spend at least 2% of GDP on national defense budgets. So far, 22 of the 32 member countries have done so.

The new spending plan under consideration is for all allies to aim for 3.5% of GDP on their defense budgets by 2032, plus an extra 1.5% on potentially defense-related things like infrastructure — roads, bridges, air- and sea ports.

While the two figures add up to 5%, factoring in infrastructure and cybersecurity would change the basis on which NATO traditionally calculates defense spending. The seven-year time frame is also short by the alliance’s usual standards.

Rutte refused to confirm the numbers under consideration, but he acknowledged that it's important to include infrastructure in the equation, “for example to make sure that bridges, yes, are there for you and me to drive our cars but also if necessary to make sure that the bridge will hold a tank. So all these expenditures have to be taken into account.”

It’s difficult to see how many members would reach a new 3.5% goal. Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain are not even spending 2% yet, although Spain does expect to reach that goal in 2025, a year past the deadline.

The U.S. demand would require investment at an unprecedented scale, but Trump has cast doubt over whether the U.S. would defend allies that spend too little, and this remains an incentive to do more, even as European allies realize that they must match the threat posed by Russia.

“There is a lot at stake for us,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said. He urged his NATO partners to meet the investment goals faster than the 2032 target "because we see the tempo and the speed, how Russia generates its forces now as we speak.”

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said his country should reach 2.5% by 2027, and then 3% by the next U.K. elections planned for 2029.

“It’s hugely important that we recommit to Europe’s defense and that we step up alongside our U.S. partners in this challenging geopolitical moment where there are so many precious across the world, and particularly in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

As an organization, NATO plays no direct security role in Asia, and it remains unclear what demands the Trump administration might make of the allies as it turns its attention to China. The last NATO security operation outside the Euro-Atlantic area, its 18-year stay in Afghanistan, ended in chaos.

Cook reported from Brussels, and Fraser from Ankara, Turkey.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a joint press statement with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (Alexander Nemenov/Pool Photo via AP)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio departs a lunch between President Donald Trump and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani at the Amiri Diwan in Doha, Qatar, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)