‘This is not my race, this is all of ours’: Fifty years ago, wheelchair racing left the start line at the Boston Marathon

“I said to myself, other people have got to do this, too,” Hall said. “This is not my race, this is all of ours. That really gave me joy.

“I think … even uphill, I was smiling."

Hall often notes that he never set out to be a pioneer when he entered the Boston Marathon in 1975. After winning the National Wheelchair Marathon a year earlier, Hall approached the Boston Athletic Association ahead of the 1975 race, seeking to become the first official wheelchair competitor at the world’s oldest marathon.

Race director and BAA president Will Cloney wouldn’t issue Hall, a Belmont native, an official bib, but he agreed to let him race under one condition: To be considered an official finisher, Hall had to complete the distance in less than three hours.

There was plenty of skepticism. Five years earlier, a Vietnam veteran named Eugene Roberts had finished the course in a little more than seven hours.

Hall was given a challenge. All he had to do was meet it.

“I had no reason to doubt what I could do,” said Hall, now 74 and living in Watertown. “I just wanted to do it correctly, professionally.”

He set off from Hopkinton on a sunny Patriots Day in a packed field.

“The most amazing thing is how cooperative the runners were,” Hall recalled. “The runners would speak to each other, ‘Wheelchair on the left, wheelchair on the right,’ and I picked my spots accordingly.”

Hall’s time of 2 hours, 58 minutes hit Cloney’s mandate with time to spare. Cloney kept his word, and Hall was recognized as the first wheelchair finisher at the Boston Marathon and eventually the race’s first wheelchair champion.

“I never thought about being recognized,” Hall said. “It was always about doing the job and doing the job correctly. I never gave it a thought. Actually, I really enjoyed the ride.”

Hall returned in 1977 for another title, this time with a few chasing him — including Sharon Hedrick (then Sharon Rahn), an undergraduate at the University of Illinois who got the idea to race Boston from a magazine.

“If I remember correctly,” Hedrick said, “It said, ‘If you’d like more information, or you’re interested in [racing Boston],’ to contact Bob.

“So I wrote a letter.”

Hall encouraged Hedrick to enter the 1977 race, so she got straight to work.

In pancake-flat Illinois, Hedrick got creative to prepare for Boston’s famous hills, spinning her wheels up and down the massive ramps that carried spectators between tiers at Illinois’ football stadium.

Like Hall, Hedrick arrived in Boston in a standard “day chair” with a little modification. Some runners offered a push during the race, and she screamed at them not to touch her, afraid any assistance would invalidate the effort.

After 3 hours, 48 minutes, 51 seconds, Hedrick became the first woman to roll down Boylston, with little idea of the doors she was helping to open.

“People at the time, they said, ‘You’re crazy,’ ” Hedrick said.

“I told them, ‘Well, why do people climb Mount Everest?’ Because they want to see if they can do it.”

That race in 1977 also introduced an early start for wheelchair athletes and made the division a fixture.

The race hit new heights in the 1980s, with athletes such as Jim Knaub and André Viger pushing the course record lower. Candace Cable-Brooks was the force of the decade for the women, winning six times from 1981-88.

By then, Hall had transitioned to pushing the sport forward with his chair designs instead of his performances.

“Hall’s Wheels” helped the sport move past the heavy hulks of steel of the 1970s to three-wheeled titanium arrows to today’s carbon-fiber marvels.

With Hall serving as the Boston Marathon’s wheelchair division coordinator, the 1990s were the age of Jean Driscoll, an Illinois alumna inspired by Hedrick, whom Driscoll called “the standard in women’s wheelchair racing.”

Driscoll won seven straight Boston titles from 1990-96, setting five course records (and world bests). She had to stomach three straight runner-up finishes to Australian Louise Sauvage — often in heartbreaking fashion, like a stuck wheel in the Cleveland Circle train tracks in 1997 — before wrestling back the crown in 2000.

“[Driscoll] has told me that I was an influence on her, and there’s really no greater compliment to me,” Hedrick said. “I could win all the medals in the world, but to be told, ‘You got me involved’ ...

“I was injured when I was 9. So there was a whole span of time in there that I never thought I’d do anything again. Inspiring another person to get involved in an activity ... that’s really special.”

An eighth win made Driscoll the most successful woman in Boston Marathon history, a record she still holds.

“The history and the lore of the Boston Marathon certainly made it special,” Driscoll said. “To me, it was bigger than the Olympic and Paralympic Games. I wanted to win Boston so bad.”

Swiss racer Franz Nietlispach won men’s five titles from 1995-2000, a period in which he’d meet a young Swiss racer named Marcel Hug, who’d also become a dominant champion.

South Africa’s Ernst van Dyk ushered in a new era of dominance with 10 titles, his first in 2001 and last in 2014, the same year that saw the final appearance of “Team Hoyt,” the father-son duo of Dick and Rick that inspired millions across more than three decades.

Though the athletes were getting faster, the wheelchair divisions weren’t always thriving. Participation hit a low with just 11 men and four women finishing the race in 2008.

The BAA had to act. In 2015, the wheelchair prize purse increased to $85,000, with the winners each receiving $20,000. In 2021, the BAA became the first World Marathon Major to offer equal $50,000 course-record bonuses across open and wheelchair divisions. Wheelchair champion prize money hit $40,000 in 2024 and $50,000 for 2025.

Tatyana McFadden brought the women of Illinois back to the forefront, dominating in her own right years after meeting Driscoll, her fellow Illini alumna. McFadden won five women’s wheelchair titles from 2013-18.

That first year, a 4-year-old from Spencer named Maddie Wilson watched McFadden blaze past in Natick. Wilson knew right away what she wanted for her fifth birthday: a racing wheelchair.

McFadden and Wilson, 20 years between them, became friends bonded by a love for racing. They met at the Falmouth Road Race a couple years later and had a quick one-lap race — McFadden won in her day chair but quickly became a mentor.

“It was just like one of those moments where you’re like … this person seems really special," McFadden said. “She really reminded me of my younger self.

“I want to see the future generation grow ... We’re going to be hosting the LA [Olympic and Paralympic] Games, and more than likely, she could be there.”

While Wilson waits for her turn to race in Boston, Jamaica Plain’s Delmace Mayo will be in the field on Patriots Day, racing the Marathon for the first time alongside the best in the world.

Mayo, a student at Boston Green Academy who competes for Brighton High, got to meet Hall recently at the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury, where Mayo was training in a chair far more advanced than the hospital chair Hall raced in a half-century ago.

“I’m surprised he didn’t flip,” Mayo joked.

Mayo got to share with Hall their first connection: Mayo’s first racing wheelchair was one Hall built. Mayo’s not alone in that. One of Hug’s first racing wheelchairs was a “Hall.” So was McFadden’s.

“It really brings a smile to my face,” Hall said.

Fifty years on from Hall’s first ride, wheelchair racing continues to thrive, rarely more visibly than at the Boston Marathon.

Come Marathon Monday, Hall and Mayo will be at opposite ends of their journeys — Mayo at the start line for the first time, Hall a grand marshal on the lead vehicle heading toward Boylston Street.

Hug will be the favorite again, his course record of 1:17:06 more than twice as fast as Hall’s first finish. An eighth victory would tie Hug on the all-time list with Driscoll, who will be watching from afar — “I still get butterflies on race day,” she said — as two more Boston Marathon champions from the University of Illinois, McFadden and Susannah Scaroni, chase another victory.

Wilson is still waiting in the wings. She turned 16 a week before Patriots Day this year, putting her in line to race when she turns 18 — exactly 50 years on from Hedrick opening the door to the women’s division.

Each owes a small piece of the journey to Bob Hall, a 24-year-old from Belmont who set off from Hopkinton in 1975 with nothing but a slightly modified hospital chair and a dream.

“I never have been one to, like, pat myself on the back,” Hall said. “But looking at the journey, I’m really proud. I feel I really did accomplish a lot, whether I knew what I was doing or not.

”It warms me up quite a bit and puts a smile on my face. It’s kind of like closing the circle of my life.”

Amin Touri can be reached at amin.touri@globe.com.