For a moment, it was as though Fred Lebow, the founding father of the New York City Marathon, were back, moving steadily along the route in Central Park where more than 45,000 runners will plow through the final leg of the race this Sunday. He glanced at his stopwatch as fellow runners looked up in surprise. Someone shouted “Lebowitz” as he neared the finish line at West 67th Street — a reference to the name he was given in his native Romania, Fischel Lebowitz.
Mr. Lebow’s trip to the finish line happens every year before the marathon. Parks workers carefully remove his 600-pound bronze statue from its large granite base on the park drive near East 90th Street, then hoist the statue into the back of a pickup truck, secure it with a rope and slowly drive it to a perch at the finish line.
The move is not merely sentimental. When Mr. Lebow died, in 1994, there was a moratorium on placing new monuments in Central Park, which is laden with 55 sculptures and statues, including those for “Alice in Wonderland,” Daniel Webster and the sled dog Balto.
But Mr. Lebow was a special case. As the longtime president of the New York Road Runners, he helped spur a national passion for long-distance running. He also transformed the New York City Marathon from a Central Park race, with just 127 entrants in 1970, into an internationally recognized institution spanning the five boroughs and drawing 2.5 million spectators.
So his statue — unveiled at the 1994 marathon, just weeks after his death from brain cancer at 62 — was declared temporary. Under park rules that means it must be moved at least once a year.
For most of the year, the statue, featuring the slim Mr. Lebow, with trim beard and cap, stands not far from the New York Road Runners headquarters on East 89th Street, known informally as Fred Lebow Place.
Its arrival at the finish line is as much a part of marathon culture as the proffering of water to weary runners along the 26.2-mile route. In the days leading up to the race, fans leave flowers at the foot of the statue, and participants in the marathon rub it for good luck.
The pickup truck bearing Mr. Lebow’s statue on Tuesday was slowed by piles of fallen limbs, vestiges of the early snowstorm that on Saturday destroyed hundreds of trees in Central Park. The truck had to make a detour onto former bridle paths, and the upright statue in back just cleared a few stone arches.
“So Fred didn’t make the best time,” said Dena Libner, a spokeswoman for the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that runs the park. “Right now, it looks like he’s staring at his watch out of impatience.”
While Mr. Lebow ran in marathons throughout the world, he was so busy directing the New York City Marathon that he participated in only one citywide race. With his cancer in remission, he ran the 1992 marathon in 5 hours 32 minutes 34 seconds. At his side was the nine-time New York marathon winner Grete Waitz of Norway. Ms. Waitz died earlier this year, also of cancer, at 57.
“The image of the two of them coming across the finish line — hands raised — is one of the emotional moments in the history of this race, and an iconic image of New York sports,” said Richard Finn, a spokesman for the New York Road Runners, which organizes the marathon.
This year Mr. Lebow and Ms. Waitz are to be inducted into the New York Road Runners Hall of Fame as the inaugural class. The induction will take place on Friday in Central Park, a ceremony that the group hopes will become an annual marathon tradition.
“It is only proper that we begin by saluting these two towering legends of N.Y.R.R. and our sport, who are forever linked,” said Mary Wittenberg, the Road Runners president.
Shortly after workers deposited the statue by the finish line, old-timers with the New York Road Runners offered recollections of Mr. Lebow. Mr. Finn remembered him as “part promoter, part showman, part wheeler-dealer, part genius.”
Jonathan Kranz, an adjunct lecturer of government at John Jay College who works part time for the Road Runners, recalled the tenacious immigrant who escaped World War II.
“He was a nutty guy in his own way,” said Mr. Kranz, who has helped organize the marathon for 30 years. “People asked, ‘How can you close 26 miles of streets for a bunch of people in short pants?’ The answer is that Fred Lebow wouldn’t accept no. He said, ‘We’ll negotiate; we’ll get it done.’ “
