For most runners, the finish line of the New York City Marathon is the end of an arduous journey. For Gianclaudio P. Marengo, it was just the beginning of a two-day ordeal that ended on Tuesday morning when he was found by an off-duty police officer on the subway — disheveled, confused and still in his running gear....
Mr. Marengo, 30, does not speak English and had never been to the city, but he was with a team of seven other runners from Italy and he had trained months for this day... He was part of a group of recovering addicts from San Patrignano, a drug rehabilitation center on the Adriatic coast...
For a long stretch he ran with a partner, but Mr. Boschini said that Mr. Marengo was the least athletic of his group and by the time he crossed the finish line in Central Park, he was alone.
“He could not find the way to the hotel,” Mr. Boschini said. “So he remained in the park.” After a few hours, the other Italians realized something was wrong. “We went to the park but we did not find him,” Mr. Boschini said. When he did not show up for a dinner reservation, the group called the Italian Consulate. The consulate called the police.
Mr. Marengo was lost. “He spent the night in the park,” Mr. Boschini said.
The Italians were scheduled to fly out of the city on Monday morning so, Mr. Marengo went to Kennedy International Airport to catch the rest of the group. “He stayed at the airport and waited,” Mr. Boschini said. “But they thought he looked homeless so they kicked him out.”
By then, it was late on Monday and Mr. Marengo had nowhere to go. He boarded the subway still outfitted for the race. While many runners, medals dangling around their necks and blue capes draped across their backs, could be seen around the city for hours after the race, by Monday night Mr. Marengo was looking a bit out of place.
On Tuesday morning, Officer Man Yam, 43, boarded the No. 2 train, heading for work in Lower Manhattan. He was reading a Daily News article about a missing runner on his phone, when he lost reception as the train reached the 34th Street-Penn Station stop around 6:40 a.m. “I got a seat and, literally, he is sitting across from me,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/nyregion/missing-italian-marathoner-found-on-new-york-subway-still-in-his-running-gear.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
