Bob Hall, the father of wheelchair racing and a 2-time winner of the Boston Marathon, dead at 74

Q: What were Bob Hall's achievements in wheelchair racing?

Bob Hall was a two-time winner of the Boston Marathon and is recognized as a pioneer in wheelchair racing.

Q: How did Bob Hall impact the sport of wheelchair racing?

Bob Hall played a crucial role in popularizing wheelchair racing, helping to establish it as a competitive sport.

Q: When did Bob Hall pass away?

Bob Hall passed away at the age of 74, although the exact date of his death is not specified.

Q: Who were some notable figures associated with Bob Hall?

Notable figures associated with Bob Hall include four-time Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers and Ernst Van Dyk, a fellow wheelchair racer.

FILE - Ernst Van Dyk of South Africa, right, shakes hands with former wheelchair winner Bob Hall, after he won the mens wheelchair division of the 110th running of the Boston Marathon, Monday, April 17, 2006. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

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FILE - Four-time Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers and wheelchair athlete pioneer Bob Hall, second right, grand marshals of the 129th Boston Marathon, greet race volunteers at the start of the Boston Marathon, Monday April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/ Jennifer McDermott, File)

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BOSTON (AP) — Bob Hall, a childhood polio survivor who became known as the father of wheelchair racing after twice winning the Boston Marathon and then going on to build racing chairs for the generations of competitors that followed, has died. He was 74.

The Boston Athletic Association said Hall's family confirmed his death on Sunday.

In 1975, Hall convinced Boston Marathon organizers to let him into the race and was promised a finishers’ certificate like the one the runners got if he completed the 26.2-mile distance in under 3 hours. (In 1970, Vietnam War veteran Eugene Roberts, who had lost both of his legs in the war, needed more than six hours to finish.)

Hall crossed the line in 2:58.

“It had nothing to do with, per se, the marathon, but it was about the inclusion,” Hall said last year, when he served as the grand marshal in Boston on the 50th anniversary of his pioneering ride. “It was that I was bringing people along.”

Hall returned to the Boston race in 1977, when it was designated as the site for the National Wheelchair Championship, and prevailed in a field of seven. As they crested Heartbreak Hill, eventual men's winner Bill Rodgers and fifth-place finisher Tom Fleming slowed to encourage him.

“The interaction was a sign that we were fully accepted as athletes,” Hall said.

Hall, who lost the use of both legs from childhood polio, sued in 1978 to have wheelchair racers admitted into the New York Marathon, a fight that wasn’t settled until the race created men’s and women’s wheelchair divisions in 2000.

“Bob Hall is an incredible man,” five-time Boston winner and eight-time Paralympic gold medalist Tatyana McFadden said last year. “I’m so thankful for him. And I think we all are, as wheelchair racers, because he really paved the way.”

Hall finished in the top three in Boston three other times, and remained active with the race. More than 1,900 wheelchair racers have followed him from Hopkinton to Boston; this year’s race on April 20 will include 50 more, along with 50 others in eight para divisions competing for more than $300,000 in prize money.

Many of the competitors — including McFadden and seven-time Boston winner Marcel Hug — learned to race in chairs built by Hall.

“Because of him crossing that finish line, we’re able to race today. And it’s evolved so much since then,” McFadden said last year. “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.”

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