Manchester Road Race Remembers The 'Boom' With 2022 Honorary Chairman

MANCHESTER, CT — One of the leaders who helped to revitalize the Manchester Road Race during the running boom of the late 1970s will be honored at this year’s Thanksgiving Day run.

Race officials announced Tuesday that Dr. David Prindiville, the former long-time president and elite runner coordinator of the Manchester Road Race Committee, will serve as the honorary chairman of this year's road race, which will be run for the 86th time on November 24, 2022.

Prindiville, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, volunteered with the MRR for 37 years before retiring to Cape Cod in the summer of 2015. Prindiville is a former high school discus thrower and football player who became a recreational runner after reading Dr. Kenneth Cooper's 1968 book about the benefits of aerobic exercise who entered his first MRR in 1976.

He was one of hundreds of thousands of Americans who took up distance running as a sport around that time.

The following year, after road race organizers experienced major problems accommodating a large increase in the number of runners who participated at the 1977 MRR, Prindiville teamed with two other local men — Dr. Eamon Flanagan and local lawyer Richard MacKenzie — to form the nucleus of what would become the Manchester Road Race Committee.

The group is credited with modernizing the road race and implementing numerous changes that enabled the MRR to grow over the years from 1,381 entrants in 1977 to 14,361 registered runners in 2014, the last road race before Prindiville retired.

None in the group had ever previously been involved with managing a major road race.

"However, we all had one thing in common," Prindiville wrote several years ago. "We all loved running
and we all loved our town of Manchester."

Prindiville wore many hats on the road race committee. He succeeded Flanagan as president of
the organization in 1990 and held that position until 2006. He also served for many years as the race's
elite runner coordinator, and as head of its development committee, which recruits financial sponsors
for the MRR. Under his leadership, the road race donated more than $1 million to area charitable and non-profit organizations.

"Dave put his heart and soul into the Manchester Road Race for decades, and the immeasurable
contributions he made helped us to become the highly successful, world-famous road race that we are
today," said Dr. Tris Carta, who followed Prindiville as president of the committee. "We are so pleased
to have him back with us in Manchester this Thanksgiving as our honorary chairperson."

Prindiville, a graduate of the University of Connecticut and the Tufts University School of Dental
Medicine, is an adjunct professor at Tufts. He resides with his wife, Denise, in Brewster, MA. They
have two sons, Brendan and Michael, who were both accomplished athletes. Brendan Prindiville, a
standout runner at Brown University who had several top-15 finishes at the MRR, is a dentist in
Massachusetts and is also a clinical professor at the Tufts Dental School.

Michael Prindiville, who starred as a defender on the Tufts University soccer team, is the chief executive officer of New Meta Entertainment, a digital E-sports media company based in New York City and Los Angeles.

Carta said that the MRR annually recognizes an individual who has made exceptional contributions to the road race, or the sport of running, by designating him or her as the event's honorary chairperson.

Past honorees have included Olympic medalists Joan Benoit Samuelson, Frank Shorter, Deena Kastor and John Treacy, and Boston Marathon Champion Amby Burfoot.

Carta added that Prindiville will attend the road race and several pre-race events this November.

The 86th Manchester Road Race is to be staged at 10 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day. The race, which is run on a 4.748-mile loop course through the town’s central streets, starts and finishes on Main Street, in front of St. James Church.

The road race's principal financial sponsors are ECHN and Pratt & Whitney.

On-line entries and more information about the road race are available at www.manchesterroadrace.com.