Competitors
Initially, the race attracted national-level runners. Benji Durden, whose opportunity to make the Olympic team was denied by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, won the first run. Frank Shorter and Ruth Wysocki ran in the early 1980s and Olympians Mark Conover and Janis Klecker were participants in the early 1990s.
The race has featured top level international competitors, including Olympic medalists Grete Waitz, Catherine Ndereba, and Elana Meyer.
Outside of elite runners, the run has also featured people prominent in other cultural spheres. Television personality Oprah Winfrey, running under a pseudonym, finished the 1994 race (3,839th with a time of 55:48 min). Actor Bill Murray fired the cannon for the 1997 Bridge Run and ran the event. In 2011, then-NASCAR Nationwide Series driver Aric Almirola, his wife Janice, and two members of the JR Motorsports #88 team from the 2011 season participated during an off-week in that series, and former state Governor Mark Sanford and two of his children also participated.
Irish Olympic runner Sean Dollman, who retired after taking a job at the College of Charleston, came out of retirement at the Bridge Run and won the Dr. Marcus Newberry Award for best runner residing in the Charleston metropolitan region (Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester counties) in 2002.
Read more about this topic: Cooper River Bridge Run