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Writing on Facebook after completing the 26-mile run, Switzer said: “I finished, like I did 50 years ago. Included in those were members of the 261 Fearless Boston Marathon Team, an organisation Switzer founded after racing in 1967 to empower women in athletics. Switzer was far from the only woman taking part in 2017, with more than 12,300 others having started. At the point on the historic course where Jock Semple grabbed a hold of her, she live streamed on Facebook, recalling that day: Yesterday morning, wearing the very same number which was almost ripped off her five decades earlier, the now 70-year-old Switzer completed the Boston Marathon for a ninth time. If that girl were my daughter, I would spank her.” We have no space in the marathon for any unauthorised person, even a man. I don’t make the rules, but I try to carry them out. At the time, in 1967, Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) rules stated women were not. Fifty years later, on April 17, Switzer is returning to the race wearing the same number. Fifty years ago, Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to officially finish the Boston Marathon.
“Unless we have rules, society will be in chaos. In 1967, a few miles into the Boston Marathon course, 20-year-old Kathrine Switzer was ambushed by race director Jock Semple, who tried to rip her bib number 261 off. “Women can’t run in the marathon because the rules forbid it,” he said. Shortly after the marathon, Boston Athletic Association director Will Cloney was asked to offer his opinion on a female runner registering and completing the historically male race.
Switzer went on to finish the race at a time of 4h20m, a full hour behind Bobbi Gibb, the female winner on the day, but who ran without registering.
This programme was first broadcast on 13th of January 2021.A few miles into the race, Semple broke onto the course and tried to rip her number off, shouting: “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!” In the ensuing fracas, Miller, a 106kg former football player and hammer thrower, pushed the race official out of the way, sending him flying into the footpath. She went on to campaign for women’s official inclusion in the Boston Marathon in 1972, helped create the first women’s road race, and was instrumental in making the women’s marathon an official Olympic event in 1984. Photos of that moment went across the world, and changed Kathrine’s life and the future of the sport. Kathrine was 20 when she signed up for the world famous Boston Marathon using only her initials, but when she was spotted by race official Jock Semple he attacked her, outraged that a woman was running in the men-only event. Back then there was a belief that women were physically incapable of doing such long distances, and it could even be dangerous for their health. Kathrine Switzer is a US runner whose dream - back in 1967 - was to be allowed to run a marathon.
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