Gibb and Switzer
Bobbi Gibb and Kathrine Switzer:
One is a neuroscientist-turned-sculptor, the other an activist and organizer. Taking different paths to the same goal, Bobbi Gibb and Kathrine Switzer outran Boston Marathon tradition and trampled the notion that women were too frail for a 26.2-mile race.
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“I was hacking through the jungle. There was no path at all,” said Gibb, who actually hid in the bushes before becoming the first woman to run Boston, a year before Switzer strutted up to the starting line as the first official female entrant. “But I think we need all kinds of people. She’s an extrovert, I’m an introvert. Everybody has a gift to give.”
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Told she was too pretty for medical school — “the boys in the lab,” and all that — Gibb trained for the race in solitude while on a cross-country road trip in her Volkswagen Microbus , then persuaded her mother to drive her to the starting line by saying: “This is going to help set women free.” Jumping out of the forsythia bushes after the gun, she 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 bring her himself. They ran 26.2 miles together three weeks before the race, and Switzer suggested they go five more — just to be sure.
He passed out.
“And when he came to, he was so impressed,” she said. “He was like an evangelist and helped me sign up.”
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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.
But he didn’t succeed, and she ran.
Switzer went to work in PR and 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.
So there you go.
Arlene Pieper is pretty awesome too: https://gazette.com/news/local/arlene-pieper-stine-first-woman-to-run-a-marathon-and-colorado-legend-has-died/article_44460372-a6a8-11eb-ac0e-675467bf392b.html
Plot twist: it turns out that women, despite being on average athletically outgunned by men by almost every metric, are in fact as good or better at extreme endurance sports. If you’re looking for someone to run seven marathons in seven days or swim a mile in Antarctic polar circle, a woman may just be your man.
Great story!
I am a woman ultramarathon runner and I can promise you that woman do not have an advantage. Yes, there are a tiny number of ultras that have been won by women, or where they hold the record time. But the record for 100 miles for women is (off the top of my head) about 2 hours slower than for men. And if you look at the finishing statistics of any mass participation ultra you’ll see just how much of an advantage men have. The leading women are usually only just inside the top 90-95% of the field.
The records held by women are mostly in the extreme ultras, over 150 miles or more with strict criteria for entry. These have a tiny field of qualified runners, which happens to contain some exceptional and dedicated female athletes. There may be a tiny number of woman who can match or beat the men, but there is not a systematic advantage. If enough people of both sexes were training for and running in these races, I would expect to see the male dominance of the ‘shorter’ ultras reflected in the longer ones.