By Aimee Berg
On a winter’s morning in New York City, Ben Oliner threw on his squash shorts and a T-shirt a college teammate gave him, and did something that was supposed to be good for his game.
He ran up the 1,576 stairs of the Empire State Building.
The idea came from his coach, John Musto.
During a practice session at the Yale Club in Manhattan, Musto was watching Oliner play the three-time US champion Julian Illingworth and suggested that his protégé enter the 31st annual race up 86 floors of New York City’s tallest building.
“Ben was trying to take his game to the top level,” Musto said. “One way is to get stronger. Stair running builds endurance and incredible quad strength. If you run stairs, you’re never going to get tired playing squash.”
Ultimately, Oliner and the No. 1 ranked player in the US decided to enter the race together. But first, they had to be accepted. Due to space constraints in the narrow stairwell, prospective athletes had to submit written applications.
In theory, a pair of Ivy League graduates should have had no trouble persuading the admissions committees, but only Oliner (Brown, 2003) gained entry to the main event while Illingworth (Yale, 2006) was permitted to run in the preliminary race designed for less serious competitors.
“I’ve never beaten him on the squash court,” Oliner said, “so I don’t know what happened. It might have been because I had done a 5K race with a good time (17:20). Or maybe I was a better writer. It’s a joke we have now.”
Oliner trained three times a week for the next three weeks in the two tallest buildings he could find.
He’d run up the 25 floors of the Yale Club and ride the elevator down and repeat three times.
“Taking the elevator was John’s idea. I had no idea what I was doing,” he said.
The motorized descents spared him a case of maiming shin splints, but it also meant riding with members and hotel guests who adhered to the Club’s strict dress code.
“They were always supportive once I explained,” he said.
The ascents were far less convivial. Oliner, 26, said, “I’d be heaving after 11 or 12 flights—and I consider myself to be pretty fit,” at 5-foot 11, 160 lbs. As a result, he never trained more than 75 flights leading up to the race.
Illingworth, feeling no pressure, only scheduled one practice run before the event—with Oliner at Oliner’s mother’s 35-floor building on West 60th Street.
“Julian was beating me,” said Oliner, but Oliner still wagered $20 on himself to have the faster race time.
In the end, the bet was moot because Illingworth spent race day in bed with the flu.
So on February 5, Oliner—without a squash rival—waited for the gun to trigger the stampede through the lobby and up the first steps. Taking two stairs at a time, he settled into his pace.
“I hung back and ended up in a pack of middle aged firemen,” he said. “They didn’t look like runners, but they had experience running up buildings.”
Around the 50th floor, Oliner began to realize he should have been more aggressive and started to speed up. He tried to deke around laggards by using the railings to propel himself past them on either side.
Most people supported his finishing kick except “one guy gruffed,” he recalled.
When Oliner finally reached the observation deck, 14 minutes 49 seconds after he had begun the vertical quarter-mile, he had placed 52nd overall.
“I think I could have gone faster,” he said afterwards. “It definitely made me excited to train for squash.”
Four days later, he claimed that only his back—not his legs—were sore and he had yet to prove whether the stair training had a positive effect on his game.
Musto, however, suspects the accomplishment will prove to be an irreversible mental breakthrough.
“When Ben’s in a long, tight game, he’ll remember, ‘Yeah, I ran to the top of the Empire State Building,’” Musto said.
“Ben’s got something on Julian now,” he added.
Illingworth, while proud of his friend, demurs. He plans to enter next year.
“I think I can take Ben,” he said.
Even Musto wants in.
Game on!
