‘No DAME ever ran the MARATHON’
FIRST WOMAN TO RUN BOSTON RACE DOES IT AGAIN — 50 YEARS LATER
Kathrine Switzer was a few miles into her history-making run at the Boston Marathon on April 19, 1967, when Jock Semple, the codirector of the famous 26-mile race, suddenly appeared behind her and tried to shove her out of the competition.
Semple’s lunge at Switzer was captured by national news photographers. What happened next changed running forever.
Switzer’s boyfriend, Thomas Miller, threw a block that knocked Semple out of the way, allowing the 20- year- old female runner from Syracuse University to finish the race in 4:20:02 at a time when women were thought to be too fragile for long- distance running.
Semple later disqualified Switzer for, among other things, running with the men. She’d registered under the name “K.V. Switzer,” not with the intention of becoming a women’s pioneer in the sport, but to prove to her coach, Syracuse’s Arnie Briggs, that women could run 26.2 miles.
On Monday, Switzer ran the Boston Marathon again at age 70, in just a little slower time, 4:44:31. Her number, the same one she wore in 1967, was retired after she crossed the finish line.
“What happened to me ( in 1967) was a radicalizing experience. And it was one that made me bound and determined to change things for women,” Switzer told the Boston Globe.
“Running had given me everything, and I wanted other women to feel that as well.
A year before Switzer made her mark on t he marathon, another woman had dared join in the race — but she had hidden in the bushes at the starting line.
Bobbi Gibb had trained for the race in solitude while on a cross- country road trip in her Volkswagen Microbus.
She persuaded her mother to drive her to the marathon’s starting line by saying: “This is going to help set women free.”
Jumping out of the forsythia bushes after the gun, Gibb joined a field of 415 men and began what has only recently been recognized as the “unofficial era of women’s participation.”
A year later, Switzer told her coach at Syracuse, Arnie Briggs, about Gibb, and said she also wanted to run Boston.
His response: “No dame ever ran no marathon.”
But Briggs struck a deal with her: If Switzer could complete the distance on a training run, he would take her himself.
They ran 26.2 miles together three weeks before the race, and Switzer suggested they go five more — just to be sure. Briggs passed out. “And when he came to, he was so impressed,” she said. “He was like an evangelist and helped me sign up.”
The two pored through the race’s entry rules — Briggs insisted that Switzer, “a card- carrying member of the ( Amateur Athletic Union),” could not be a bandit and would have to register — and found nothing about gender. Switzer, an aspiring journalist who thought her first name didn’ t sound writerly enough, signed up using her first initial, K.
“I generally am pretty law-abiding. I don’t speed in my car,” Switzer said.
“But am I bold? I’m also bold. And am I the type of person who asks for permission or begs for forgiveness? I ask for forgiveness.”
Although Gibb was also in the race for the second year in a row, it was Switzer in official Bib No. 261 that so offended race director Jock Semple that he ran after her, in his blazer and slacks, and tried to pull her off the course.
“We thought we were following the rules,” Switzer said. “And Jock thought we were trying to pull a fast one.”
Switzer’s boyfriend shouldered him out of the way, and Switzer ran on. ( Semple, who died in 1988, maintained he was trying to protect his race from international rules that sanctioned only men’s marathons; by 1972, when women were first admitted to Boston, he and Switzer had become friends.)
Semple couldn’t knock Switzer off the course, but he did change her path: After the pictures of the scuffle were splashed across newspaper front pages, she found herself an unintended — but eager — spokeswomen for her gender.
“I wasn’t there to prove anything ,” she said .“It wasn’t until Jock Semple attacked me did everything changed.”
Switzer went on to win t he 1974 New York City Marathon and provide TV commentary in Boston for the past 37 years.
She also helped create the Avon International Running Circuit of 400 women’s races that showed the IOC there were enough women to fill out an Olympic field.
When the women’s marathon was added to the Summer Games in 1984, the qualifiers at the U.S. Olympic trials were given trophies of a girl running. It was sculpted by Gibb. “Bobbi doesn’t like us to call her the hippie love child of the ’ 60s,” said 1968 Boston Marathon winner Amby Burfoot, noting that Gibb was a serious student who switched from medicine to law after being told she was too pretty for med school. “But nevertheless, she’s a spirit child.
“And perhaps it’s an exaggeration to call Kathrine (who works in PR) the corporate one, but there you are,” said Burfoot, whose book “First Ladies of Running” profiles some of the key women in the sport. “They just proved that they’re all unique and wonderful and there are different ways to get to the finish line.”
Gibb is working on a new sculpture — a life- size bronze that she hopes will be the first of a woman along the Boston Marathon course.
Switzer credits her for starting a movement, and Gibb acknowledges that it probably needed someone else to carry it forward.
In 2015, Switzer incorporated her old bib number from the ’ 67 Boston Marathon — 261 — into the name of non- profit she created, 261 Fearless, that uses running to empower women around the world.
And on Monday, when she ran the Boston Marathon again, she was greeted with acclaim instead of consternation.
Switzer’s story continues to inspire women. Her 261 bib number is sometimes worn by women on their arms when they race. Others have had it tattooed on them.
“It obviously meant so much to them to have this sense of fearlessness,” Switzer said of what her bib number represents.
“They’ve really inspired me that way.”
JOCK THOUGHT WE WERE TRYING TO PULL A FAST ONE.