The photo taken on the course at Boston may represent the most famous turning point in women's running, but right there on the snowy road was when Switzer took the most important decision. She refused to run another step until Briggs admitted she could do it. Switzer, who came from stubborn, pioneering stock, stopped dead in her tracks. In her book, Marathon Woman, Switzer recalls Briggs telling her: "Oh, a woman can't run the Boston Marathon! Women can't do that kind of distance they can't run that long." Back then, there were myths aplenty about what would happen to women who ran long distances.īriggs, a gentleman always, let his chivalrous nature blind his knowledge of Switzer the runner, who was easily accompanying him on 16km training jaunts around the hills of Virginia, where Switzer was a student at Syracuse University.
She may as well have said she wanted to fly to the moon. Fed up, she declared: "Oh, Arnie, let's quit talking about the Boston Marathon and run the damn thing!"
Out in a storm one night, Switzer was listening to her running partner and marathon veteran Arnie Briggs tell yet another story about Boston. The truth is, Switzer had already made her stand months earlier, on a lonely, snow-sludged road miles from home and far from the cameras. In fact, she says, had she known the reaction her entry would draw, she probably would not have run.
"It was definitely not to make some big political statement," says Switzer, who has written a book about her career as an athlete and promoter of women's running. Switzer, 61, reveals that although the incident launched a new era of women's sport, she had not entered to make a feminist stand. She finished as the first woman to officially enter the marathon and the picture flashed around the world. She has a look of trepidation as race organiser Jock Semple scrags at her, enraged that a girl - a girl! - would have the temerity to run in his race. It shows Switzer's tall figure in a grey tracksuit bearing the number 261 in the 1967 Boston marathon. She smashed those prejudices with an incident captured in a photograph which became world famous. It's so obvious today, but 40 years ago when Switzer unwittingly became a pioneer of women's distance running such beliefs were common. She is a living, breathing myth-buster, still running the streets of Wellington and proving that women can run without turning into men. Kathrine Switzer's uterus did not fall out.
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