IT isn't hard picking out Paul Pilkington from among the 19,000-plus runners gathered here for today's running of the 10th annual City of Los Angeles Marathon. He's the one who looks like all he had to do was show up.
Normally that's considered the ultimate no-no for an athlete. The last thing you're supposed to do is arrive at the starting line looking like the outcome is already in the bag. There's no better formula for disaster.But as the organizers of the Los Angeles Marathon would be the first to tell you, when it comes to their race Pilkington is not normal. If he wants to show up wearing a big grin, looking like he just spent six months on a Jamaican beach, that's fine with them. As long as he shows up.
L.A. is on the marathon map because of this 36-year-old junior high health teacher from Roy, Utah, and L.A. knows it. His performance last year, when he came in as the race rabbit - the hired pace car and nothing more - and went out as the champion gave Los Angeles the identity it was looking for.
Pilkington brought a Hollywood ending to, well, Hollywood. He was Rocky without the studio. The guy from the undercard who stole the show in just one take.
He started fast and he finished faster. Your normal rabbit doesn't do that. Your normal rabbit knows his pace and he knows his place. He pulls the field through the first half of the race and then says see ya. He gets lost in the crowd faster than a KGB agent. When a rabbit's work is done, people think he's backing up.
But it was a cool day in L.A. a year ago, and when Pilkington covered the first half of the marathon at the 1:05 pace they'd paid him $3,000 to maintain, he discovered a strange thing.
He was alone.
The field was stretched out well behind him, back on Sunset or Bundy or Rockingham or Santa Monica Boulevard, wanting to have some fun.
So Pilkington decided to keep going. This was the marathon designated as the U.S. national championship, after all, and even if some of the foreigners in the field eventually did pass him - which he fully expected, any time now - he could still conceivably finish as the top American and become the national champion. Nothing shabby about that.
So on he ran, and on and on, and by the time he came to the finish line at the Coliseum he still hadn't been passed. By anybody.
He'd done something rabbits just don't do. He'd won. Not only did they pay him his $3,000 rabbit's fee, but also $12,000 for first place, and another $15,000 for winning the U.S. championship, and a new Mercedes Benz worth over $40,000, which Pilkington cashed in and replaced with a Harley.
"I always wanted a Harley," he said. "It seemed like the time to get one."
Some of the elite runners who finished in his wake were at first indignant about the rabbit winning, but that didn't last long because they soon realized that complaining about not being able to pass the rabbit was like the wicked stepsisters complaining about the size of their feet.
Both L.A. and Pilkington have lived happily ever after. A year later they're each in better shape than ever. With today's running, the L.A. Marathon is not only poised to become the second largest marathon in the world - behind only New York - but it also boasts its most elite field ever as it enters its 10th year. Four runners, including former world champions Arturo Barrios and Mark Plaatjes, U.S. record-holder Bob Kempainen and the 1990 distance runner of the year Martin Pitayo, have all run marathons below 2:10.
As for Pilkington, whose career best marathon time is 2:11:13, he finds himself in greater demand than ever. L.A. is paying him $10,000 to be this year's rabbit - your basic 333 percent raise - and as added, uh, carrots, they're again dangling the $12,000 winner's check and accompanying Mercedes Benz automobile.
He'd be hard-pressed to pull off a rabbit double, of course, and win again. Even if the field wasn't far superior to that of a year ago, there's no way Pilkington would be allowed to scamper away to a minute lead at the halfway point. Not this year. Not any year. Ever again.
He's a marked rabbit and he knows it. That much was clear as soon as he arrived in Los Angeles this past Thursday. Ever since, he's done appearance after appearance and interview after interview. He's been on TV almost as often as Rosa Lopez.
Everywhere he's gone they've wanted to hear the story again and again. About how he just kept going, like the Energizer Bunny.
About how he faked out the field. About how he pulled a fast one. L.A. loves a good script. L.A. loves a good ending. And L.A. loves a sequel. That's Pilkington's new role, for as long as he wants it. John Wayne in Reeboks. Just show up, and smile.