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New York Times
02-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
A Blind Bicyclist and His Daughter Work in Tandem
Good morning. It's Friday. We'll look at a father-daughter team that is preparing to ride in the Five Boro Bike Tour this weekend. We'll also find out what prompted a composer to write a tribute after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for president. Thomas Panek has run more than 20 road races. His time in the New York Half Marathon last year was 2 hours 9 minutes 21 seconds. On Sunday, he will cover some of the same ground in a different way, as a rider in the Five Boro Bike Tour. 'I'm a little nervous,' he said. 'I don't know what to expect when you're using a different group of muscles in your body.' That sentence skipped over two things that will set him apart from most of the 32,000 other riders. One is that he will ride on a tandem bicycle. The other is that he is blind. He has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative disorder that left him legally blind by the time his daughter, Madeleine, was born 22 years ago. She will be the one in the front seat of the tandem, shifting the gears and calling out when turns are coming or she needs to brake. They have practiced stopping because, as he put it, 'if she were to suddenly brake, I would get thrown forward into her.' Many sightless athletes talk about their collaboration with their guides. 'Harmony and synchrony' was how the blind runner Jerusa Geber dos Santos of Brazil described the relationship during the Olympics in Paris last year. Madeleine Panek talked about how she and her father trust each other, an idea he echoed. 'Holding my hand when she was 2 years old, helping me cross the street, it's second nature for her to guide me,' he said. 'It takes some coordination to trust the captain if you're blind and you don't know the person. We already have that relationship. That is going to be the easy part. The hard part is getting it done.' He knows the route from running — it is similar to the course of the New York City Marathon. The two races start and end in different places, but both cover the 2.6-mile-long Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and highways like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive. Some of the hazards are similar, too, like potholes that can seem as large as craters on the moon. But some of the hazards are different for cyclists: Expansion joints between sections of pavement could be trouble spots. Riders who do not spot them in time could fly over the handlebars. Thomas Panek started a new job last month, as the president and chief executive of Lighthouse Guild, a nonprofit organization that provides services for blind people. When he heard about other cyclists from the Lighthouse Guild who would be riding, he signed up. He waited to ask his daughter to be the pilot 'because she just finished her MCATs,' he said — the standardized test for medical school applications. 'I didn't want to add any additional pressure,' he said. She is coming to New York for the weekend as she approaches graduation from Binghamton University and is applying to medical school. Bike New York, which runs the Five Boro Bike tour, says that 210 riders with disabilities will be in the ride on Sunday and that 101 of them will be visually impaired cyclists on tandem bicycles. Ken Podziba, the president of Bike New York, first rode in the tour in 2002 on a tandem bike with Matthew Sapolin, a friend who was blind and was the commissioner of the Mayor's Office for People With Disabilities under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Podziba, the sports commissioner under Bloomberg, loved it and ended up working for Bike New York. Thomas Panek said their tandem is 'a long vehicle,' adding that 'you have to account for the fact that it's almost like pulling a trailer.' 'On a tandem bike,' he said, 'you're pedaling for two. If I get tired at some point, Madeleine can pick up the level of effort.' And vice versa, he said. 'But on the Verrazzano, it's going to take everything from both of us.' There is a chance of showers throughout the day, but also sun and temperatures near 80. In the evening, there is a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, with a low around 63. In effect until May 26 (Memorial Day). The latest New York news A first New York performance of a requiem from the 1960s On a June day in 1968, a man named Frank Lewin drove his three daughters to a railroad station not far from where they lived in Princeton, N.J. He wanted to watch for a train that was going to pass by. 'I mostly remember standing there, and that it was very hot,' said one of the daughters, Naomi Lewin. The train Frank Lewin wanted to see was carrying the body of Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general and senator who had been assassinated while campaigning for president in Los Angeles a couple of days earlier. The funeral had been held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. The train was bound for Washington; Kennedy was to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Frank Lewin was a composer who was perhaps best known then for scores for television shows like 'The Defenders' and 'The Nurses' on CBS. But he wrote serious music, too, including an opera based on John Steinbeck's novella 'Burning Bright,' and decided to write a requiem Mass in memory of Kennedy. It will be given its first New York performance, with Matthew Lewis and the St. George's Choral Society, on Sunday at the Rutgers Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side. 'I think my dad felt there was a need for a requiem in the English language,' Naomi Lewin said. The works by Mozart, Verdi and Fauré follow Latin texts. Lewin's setting of the Lord's Prayer in English is particularly lovely. 'Dad wanted to compose music for an entire Catholic requiem service,' Naomi Lewin said. 'So instead of having the congregation speak the Lord's Prayer, as they would normally do during a church service, he wrote music for it, and labeled it to be sung by the congregation.' As for Kennedy, 'my dad obviously admired him,' Naomi Lewin said. The Lewins were German Jews who had come to the United States 'looking for freedom — and the sort of freedom that Robert Kennedy was fighting for,' she said. 'Robert Kennedy had a legacy of civil rights and helping poor people. This is history.' Frank Lewin turned to the Roman Catholic chaplain at Princeton University and others from the university's Aquinas Institute who 'gave him pointers because he didn't know about the Catholic liturgy.' The piece was first performed in the Princeton University Chapel in 1969. 'Dad used the Catholic text' for the Lord's Prayer, 'ending at 'deliver us from evil,' with no 'kingdom' or 'power' or 'glory,'' said Naomi Lewis, who was a professional singer and a classical music radio personality. 'Years later, having sung in countless churches, I told Dad that he should compose a Protestant ending.' So he did. Così fan tattoo Dear Diary: I have been attending operas for more than 25 years and getting tattoos for almost twice as long. On a trip to New York in 2018, I attended a Metropolitan Opera production of Mozart's 'Così Fan Tutte' that was staged in Coney Island and featured actual sideshow performers, including a fire-eater, a sword swallower, a snake dancer and a contortionist. Later that summer, I returned to the city for an annual tattoo show in Manhattan. Some of the same sideshow performers provided entertainment. As one woman came off the stage, I told her I had seen her earlier that year in the opera. She looked at the heavily tattooed and pierced crowd. 'I'm guessing you'll be the only person this weekend who tells me that,' she said. — Jil McIntosh Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@ Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
New York Times
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Wrexham's Humphrey Ker on his job switch: ‘I was slightly falling out of love with the whole experience'
As the man who ultimately set Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney on the path towards buying Wrexham, Humphrey Ker has enjoyed a ringside seat for the club's subsequent rise. It means he has plenty of reasons to be thankful to the Hollywood duo. That gratitude, however, does not extend to being effectively strong-armed into running next month's Manchester Marathon by Wrexham's two co-chairmen. Advertisement 'It has been exactly as much fun as I expected — which is not fun at all!' says the comedy writer and actor. 'I keep searching for this runner's high that everyone keeps telling me exists. Maybe I'll get delirious around mile 12 and suddenly start enjoying myself, I'm not sure.' A throwaway comment seized upon by Reynolds and McElhenney explains why Ker will next month pound the streets of Manchester for 26.2miles in aid of the Wrexham Miners' Rescue Project, the club's nominated charity partner for this season. At the launch of an appeal to raise £250,000 ($322,000) towards turning the historic Miners Rescue Station building — those who led the rescue attempts at the 1934 Gresford Disaster that claimed 266 lives were trained there — into a community hub, Ker quipped to the audience: 'I'm hoping we will get there without me having to run a marathon.' GO DEEPER The mining disaster that defines Wrexham to this day A few weeks later, on their regular video call with Ker to discuss club business, the two owners not only revealed they had seen the clip but also entered him to run the April 27 marathon. Oh, and they'd start the fundraising by donating £26,200 each. Five or so months of training later and the start line is coming into view. The Athletic can sense Ker's nerves from 5,000 miles away, even allowing for how wife Megan Ganz — also a comedy writer and member of the team behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia — will be joining him on the run. 'About the only positive thing is I can now run for an hour without stopping,' he says in an early morning call from the couple's Los Angeles home. 'When I started this process, I ran until my heart rate went over a certain level and then walked. This honestly meant I was running for one minute at a time and that was it. 'Everyone who knows me has been saying, 'You? But you hate running'. The big problem is I'm quite fat these days. I've got skinny legs and skinny arms, but carrying around the waist. I look like an avocado.' Needless to say at a club where the Welcome to Wrexham documentary cameras film every move, Ker's fundraising efforts will form part of the upcoming fourth series. He insists much of it won't be pretty, even if the support from within the club includes a delegation who plan to join him in running the New York Half Marathon on March 16. Even that landmark moment, though, will carry consequences. Advertisement 'My wife depressed me the other day by pointing out I'll have to run another half marathon the following Sunday after New York,' adds Ker with a wince. 'Just to keep me on track.' As for next month's big day, he adds: 'There's no target other than to finish. Anything that involves me propelling myself over the finishing line on my own two feet is a victory for avocado-bodied men everywhere.' Wrexham has seen a lot less of Ker this season. And not just in a physical sense amid that fitness regimen for the upcoming marathon. Compared to the 2023-24 season, when he spent months on end in north Wales working on club business, his visits have become much more fleeting. Ker was at the STōK Cae Ras for the opening day victory against Wycombe Wanderers. He then came back for a few days around the 90th anniversary of the Gresford disaster in September, as he did again during a flying visit over Christmas. Otherwise, the 42-year-old has been at home in LA. After previously spending so long apart from Ganz — and effectively putting his writing and acting career on hold — the shift has been welcome. 'I was missing my wife,' says the lifelong Liverpool fan, who famously triggered McElhenney's interest in football by urging his co-writer on Mythic Quest to watch the Netflix documentary Sunderland 'Til I Die during the Covid-19 pandemic. GO DEEPER Sunderland 'Til I Die revisited five years on - 'I know Prince William's watched it' 'I was finding the grind of it a bit harder. I was slightly falling out of love with the whole experience, in a way. 'This season, though, has been great and allowed me to get back into my other life. It's been a good year, career-wise. It's always amazing to do both things, but it has been nice to give more of a focus to that side.' Michael Williamson's appointment as chief executive officer in May last year was the catalyst for Ker to resume his life on the other side of the Atlantic. The switch from executive director to community director came at his request amid a series of key appointments designed to bolster Wrexham's leadership team. One of those was Jamie Edwards, the head of community who Ker now works alongside. Advertisement 'How the whole setup works today has definitely improved from my perspective,' he says. 'There's less stuff landing on my plate where I was previously thinking, 'I don't know what this is and I'm not responsible for it'. 'Or I was getting tagged into things (by fans on social media) and asked why we were doing it like this. I had no idea! People were still emailing me or shouting at me about things I had no control over.' There has, though, been one downside to all this change. 'I do miss being in Wrexham and I do miss being at the heart of it all,' he adds. 'It's also a weird experience now in going to the stadium and seeing all these faces who I don't recognise. And they don't know who I am.' Ker will become a much more familiar face during the run-in. He's due to return to Wales a few days after the New York Half Marathon and will stay until the season ends. But Ker is refocusing on a career that took off in 2011 after winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer. A second series of BBC sitcom Daddy Issues, starring Ker alongside David Morrissey and Aimee Lou Wood, has recently been commissioned, while Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days of Christmas, a show he co-wrote with David Reed, starts a two-month run in Birmingham later this year. Then, there's a film Ker has written with Ganz called If I Were You that is being shot by Amazon, with other big projects also in the pipeline. Wrexham clearly have lofty ambitions of their own and, according to Ker, the club are unlikely to settle for anything other than their very best. 'Phil (Parkinson) isn't a manager who is happy with stability,' he says. 'Same for Rob and Ryan as well. If Rob has a philosophy that can be condensed into one sentence then it would be, 'Why not us?'. 'He doesn't care for conventional wisdom. He likes to break the mould. Phil, (assistant) Steve Parkin and this group of players are all the same. They want to win. It's why when people bag on them, it gets my goat. 'Being more removed from things, it's been fascinating to watch expectations evolve as the season has gone on. Back in August at the Wycombe game, I was telling everyone, 'Anything above 12th, we should build a statue of Phil'. Advertisement 'Fans were saying the same to me. But we've gone from that to now, where we've been right up at the top of the table all season and massively outperformed all expectations, and yet I'm reading comments such as, 'Can't believe we scraped past Mansfield'. Or, 'The manager is s***'.' Ker remains a firm favourite among those who only know Wrexham through a documentary streamed by FX in the United States and Disney+ in the UK, but he's also popular on the ground, be that among supporters or the players. This affection, though, has not saved Ker from some ribbing during the countdown to that marathon date in Manchester. 'The one who's made the most fun of me is (former Wrexham captain) Ben Tozer,' he says. 'Now he's no longer shackled by being a club employee, he seems to feel he can be as insolent and impertinent as he wants. 'I'm also fully aware Rob and Ryan are hoping to watch me suffer and then come out the other side, transformed. 'Me? I just want to get it all over with and, hopefully, raise some funds for a great cause.'
