Kathrine Switzer: The Boston Marathon

Throughout history, women have been treated poorly and denied their rights to many things, such as freedom to vote, owning a land, have custody over goods and even running a marathon. Many fearless women have risen up to the challenge and demanded their rights, such as Kathrine Switzer. Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston marathon in the United States. She was violently asked quit the marathon and she strongly refused. Due to her courage and boldness, women can freely participate in running marathon nowadays. Although she created an uproar in the 1967 Boston marathon, Kathrine challenged the all-male tradition of the Boston Marathon and became the first woman to officially enter and run the event.
Kathrine was born January 5th 1947 in Amberg, Germany. At an early age of her life, she was fascinated with runners and began to train and eventually become a marathon runner. During this time, it was unheard of a woman running a marathon, a race. Although they were no laws indicating that women could run, it was looked upon as “improper”. Though they have the right to vote, they were still looked upon as housewives and not athletes.
Originally, Kathrine had no intention to change the way women were perceived as athletes, her desire was just to run. Throughout her encountered in the 1967 marathon, she began prove to men and the whole world that women are capable of running just as men, sometime even better.
According to Kathrine Switzer in her memoir book Marathon Woman, she was encouraged by her father to run a mile per day as training for the marathon.
She trained personally for years before approaching Arnie Briggs, the men cross country coach. When she told him of her requests to train her for the Boston Marathon, he forcefully replied: “No dame ever ran the Boston Marathon!” he shouted, as skidding motorists nearly killed us. Then he added, “If any woman could do it, you could, but you would have to prove it to me. If you ran the distance in practice, I’d be the first to take you to Boston.” (Switzer) Three months before the marathon, they had their trial. Kathrine ran the twenty six marathon miles plus and extra five miles. While her coach was completely winded and passed out, she stood tall and grinned in
joy.
Briggs signed her up for the marathon after checking the bylaws of genders concerning the marathon. She identified herself under her name initials to avoid suspicions. The Boston marathon of 1967 was cold, rainy day. Therefore, Kathrine remained in her warm ups outfit for the run resembling a male to also avoid attention. As the race began, she was ecstatic, nervous, but determined to finish the race. Toward the middle of the race, the press noticed her figured and realized she was a female. Thus began her 10 seconds of fame, which unfortunately turned ferocious as the maraton manager tried to pull her out of the race. Kathrine describe the experience in her memoir saying: “A big man, a huge man, with bared teeth was set to pounce, and before I could react he grabbed my shoulder and flung me back, screaming, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!” Then he swiped down my front, trying to rip off my bib number, just as I leapt backward from him. He missed the numbers, but I was so surprised and frightened that I slightly wet my pants and turned to run.” Her boyfriend Tom, also a runner, tackled the manager, risking being pulled out of the race.
As she thought of the violence the manager demonstrated toward her because of her gender, Kathrine vows to finish the race. According to the Peralta in the article The First Woman To Enter The Boston Marathon, Kathrine says to her coach Arnie: “Arnie, I’m not sure where you stand in this now. But no matter what, I have to finish this race. Even if you can’t, I have to—even on my hands and knees. If I don’t finish, people will say women can’t do it, and they will say I was just doing this for the publicity or something. So you need to do whatever you want to do, but I’m finishing.” Her coach agreed with her and true ot her words, she indeed finished the race, at the bewilderment of the press and the marathon manager.
She strongly believes that women in the 1900s weren’t given the opportunities to participate in sports. They weren’t offered scholarships and grants in universities to participate in athleticism such as men. She affirms that if they were, many women would have take part in it and extremely exceeded. Therefore, today she works to rectify this by being an inspirational speaker who addresses corporations, business conferences, universities and special interest groups with a message that goes far beyond running. Her inspiring, genuine and energetic speeches inspires many for change in society. She encourages young and old to create for themselves and others success in a difficult environment, turn biases into opportunities, and courageously embrace social and cultural change in daily lives.
Switzer has run 39 marathons, won the 1974 New York City Marathon and in 1975, her two-hour and 51-minute marathon in Boston was ranked sixth in the world and third in the USA in women’s marathon. She is still running marathons today!