7 Long Islanders To Compete In Marathon Olympic Trials

EAST ISLIP, NY — The U.S. Olympic Trials for the men's and women's marathon will be held Saturday in Atlanta and Long Island will be well represented at the event. At least seven athletes hailing from or currently living and training on the island will vie for six spots, along with 700 other runners from across the country.

The 2020 race has the biggest field ever, with 480 women and 215 men competing, according to The New York Times. Men had to qualify for the trials by running 2 hours and 19 minutes while women had to beat 2 hours and 45 minutes. Most runners have low odds to make the team, with veterans like Galen Rupp and Desi Linden expected to run as much as 10 minutes to 20 minutes faster than the qualifying times to clinch their spots on the team. But these serious runners often have careers and lives outside running and view the racing trials as the pinnacle of their amateur careers.

Brendan Dagan is the owner of the Long Island racing and timing company Elite Feats. He told Patch that for these individual runners the trials represent "a standard and a goal," but that the race as a whole is about "showing our depth as a country in the classical distance race, the marathon."

And it's no surprise to him Long Island is part of that depth.

"Long Island has a rich history of talented runners," he said. "Not only do we have the original New York City Marathon winner Gary Muhrcke and many more, it's nice to see the current generation keeping the flame alive."

Brendan Martin of Huntington will race on the men's side. He ran at Smithtown High School and then Columbia University and now works as a physical therapist. This will be his second Olympic Trials after he finished 20th in 2016. He's one of Long Island's fastest qualifiers with a personal best of 2:15:30.

Tom Slattery is a Garden City native who ran for Fordham University. Like Martin, he now competes with the New York Athletic Club in New York City. He qualified for the trials with a 2:18:35 in Houston.

Aileen Barry lives in Manhasset and is a mother of four children. She attended Fordham University, but didn't begin running seriously until after college. She told the Central Park Track Club earlier this week that she's had to manage training for the Olympic Trials with her youngest child being only seven months old.

Laura Cummings of Bay Shore is the assistant men's and women's cross country coach at Hofstra University. Cummings was a star at Bay Shore High School before running at the University of North Carolina. She qualified with a 2:41:37.

Allie Kieffer may be the most famous name in American women's running on this list. Kieffer, a West Islip native, became nationally competitive after she placed 5th in the 2017 New York City Marathon and then 7th in 2018. With a 2:28 personal record, Kieffer, who now lives in Texas, is one to watch.

Leonora Petrina is a New Zealand native who came to Long Island to run at Stony Brook University and now resides in Medford. She races for the Sayville-Smithtown Running Company and has a personal marathon best of 2:39.

And Gabrielle Russo is an assistant professor at Stony Brook University who won the Suffolk County Marathon in 2017 after returning to running after taking a long break since competing in college at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. The East Islip resident qualified for the trials with a 2:44:52.

The race will air from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday on NBC, NBCSports.com/live and the NBC Sports app.