Opinion: A lesson in humanity at the Boston Marathon

Robson De Oliveira, Ajay Haridasse and Aaron Beggs cross the finish line in the Boston Marathon on Monday. Cj Gunther/Reuters

Cj Gunther/Reuters

John Korir and Sharon Lokedi, both from Kenya, won their second consecutive Boston Marathons this week. Marcel Hug of Switzerland and Eden Rainbow-Cooper of Great Britain won the men's and women's wheelchair marathons.

But most of the more than 30,000 people who compete each year may be roused to take on the 26.2-mile course not because they believe they can win, but in pursuit of a personal best. They ache, train, and spur themselves to finish faster than they ever have before.

Runner Ajay Haridasse, a local college student, was only about a thousand feet from the finish line on Boylston Street when his legs just gave out.

He struggled to stand, only to fall again. And then again. "After falling down the fourth time," he told the Boston Herald, "I was getting ready to crawl."

Dozens of runners passed him on the street, as you can see in various fan videos. They were in a race, after all. Haridasse wasn't visibly injured, but he was too exhausted and dehydrated to go on.

Aaron Beggs, a runner from Northern Ireland, saw a competitor on the ground, and stopped his own sprint to the finish to help him.

"Just natural instinct made me go over to him," he told the BBC.

Another runner, Robson De Oliveira, from Brazil, said he had seen Haridasse collapse from a distance, but thought he was too weak from own race to help him up alone. Yet, he told the BBC "In that moment, I thought, 'God, if someone stops, I'll stop too and help him'."

So when Beggs did just that, De Oliveira pulled up, too. Together the strangers slung Haridasse's arms over their shoulders and staggered to the finish line as a trio.

Haridasse told People Magazine, "To stop and help someone struggling on Boylston in the Boston Marathon when they were approaching the same level of exhaustion that I was feeling says so much about them as people."

One runner's act of selflessness, which he credits to instinct, inspired another to stop and help, too. Beggs and De Oliveira finished the Boston Marathon this week with slower times than they would have if they'd run past the man on the ground. Instead, they ran their personal bests.