Sports Illustrated’s New Cover Commemorates Boston Marathon

This week’s Sports Illustrated cover is testament to Boston’s resilient spirit in the aftermath of the bombings at last year’s marathon.

Commemorating the city’s comeback since the Boston Marathon tragedy one year ago, the cover photo depicts 3,000 Boston residents, including the city’s mayor, dozens of runners and first responders in a moving portrait of the city’s spirit.

To shoot the cover photo, Sports Illustrated asked fans to wear Boston gear and join Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and city police, firefighters and others in the city’s downtown area last Saturday, a little more than a week before this year’s Boston Marathon.

“The Boston Marathon can’t help but regenerate itself,” writes Scott Price, who wrote the accompanying story for Sports Illustrated this week. “It will always be new because there’s something about its history and civic fervor, its oddly attractive personal toll, even its most catastrophic moment, that makes converts of us all.”

Sports Illustrated is owned by TIME parent company Time Inc.