Silvia Ruegger
1984 Los Angeles Olympics
Three years later, Gareau would finish fifth at the inaugural iaaf World Athletics Championships in Helsinki. In 1984, dropping out of the first Olympic women’s marathon in Los Angeles (which was won so heroically by America’s sweetheart, Joan Benoit) due to injury, she figuratively passed the torch to Silvia Ruegger, who finished a credible eighth.
Ruegger was inspired when the International Olympic Committee approved the women’s marathon debut in Los Angeles. “I heard about [coach] Hugh Cameron,” she recalled during a 2018 interview. “I called him up in January 1984, never having met him, and said, ‘Share my dream – I want to try and make the Olympic team in the marathon in May.’ It was four months away.
“Hugh was very gracious. He said, ‘Silvia, it’s going to be hard.’ Not once did he discount that it could be a reality, even though I was coming back from two and a half years of injury. He thought it was important for me to come to Toronto.”
Ruegger set a Canadian record of 2:29:08 at those Los Angeles Olympics – a dream come true. “When I wrote that dream, I never thought about the cost,” she said, a year before her death from cancer in 2019. “I really hadn’t shown any unusual talent. I thought the only thing that would keep me from achieving the dream would be my own unwillingness to work hard enough and give enough.”
Ruegger, of course, lowered her national record at the 1985 Houston Marathon (2:28:36 – the record that stood until Marchant broke it in 2013).
Ruegger’s eighth-place finish at the inaugural women’s Olympic marathon was a dream come true .“When I wrote that the cost, ”she said. dream, I never thought about the cost, ”she said.