Fake ‘winner’ of 1980 Boston Marathon dies

The first woman to cross the finish line of the 1980 Boston Marathon seemed to have run 800 meters, not 26.2 miles. Scarcely out of breath, hair still in place, she had finished her first marathon in New York months earlier in just under three hours, then set a course record in Boston with a stunning time of 2 hours 31 minutes 56 seconds, the third fastest in women’s history.

But competitors said they never saw Rosie Ruiz and her bright yellow shirt fly down the course. On video tapes of the marathon, the 26-year-old Cuban American was nowhere to be found. No one had jotted down her number, W50, at checkpoints during the event.

Four days after the race, officials in New York concluded that she had skipped much of that city’s marathon, apparently taking a 16-mile subway ride to the finish after turning an ankle. And in what is sometimes described as one of the worst moments in marathon history, Ruiz was soon stripped of her Boston Marathon title as well, as race officials determined she had jumped in with roughly half a mile to go, cheating Canadian runner Jacqueline Gareau at the finish line.

Ruiz, who later went by Rosie M. Vivas, was 66 when she died July 8, according to an obituary her family placed with a funeral home in West Palm Beach, Florida. The obituary said she had been diagnosed with cancer more than 10 years ago but did not specify where she died.

In rare interviews after the Boston race, Ruiz always insisted that she had completed the marathon. As she saw it, her boyish short hair had led the crowd to mistake her for a men’s runner; officials were embarrassed that she, an amateur, had defeated the professionals; and her victory marked a “triumph” for women’s sports.

“I do not believe that there is enough coverage for women in any of the races,” Ruiz said in a tearful news conference days after the marathon. “I believe that maybe after this, whether you prove me guilty or not - which I am not - there will be more coverage of women crossing the finish line during 26 miles.”