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First Woman’s Strides in Boston Still Echoing
Two miles into the 1967 Boston Marathon, an official tried to eject me from the race simply because I was a woman. That event changed my life and, as a consequence, the lives of millions of women around the world. The marathon was a man’s race in those days; women were considered too fragile to…
Read MoreIn ’67, Switzer was ‘Magellan’ in sweats
Kathrine Switzer wonders what would have happened if that April day in 1967 had come up warm and sunny in Hopkinton. “History might have been different,” she muses. “I would have had a really cute outfit on, shorts and a top, and I would have been stopped at the starting line.” Or if she’d entered…
Read MoreSwitzer to Launch Autobiography at Boston Marathon
Although not the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon –that was Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb who ran unofficially in 1966 and clocked 3:27:17– Switzer was the first woman to run the race with an official number issued by the Boston Athletic Association. Entered only as “K.V. Switzer” in the 1967 edition of the race, her…
Read MoreThe Girl Who Started It All
On a dark six-mile run in a wild snowstorm in mid-December 1966, I had a terrible argument with my otherwise kindly old coach, Arnie Briggs. It was in Syracuse, New York, where God first invented snow and never let up. I was a 19-year-old journalism student at Syracuse University, and since there was no women’s…
Read MoreKathrine Switzer interview with Carl Lewis
Kathrine Switzer interviews Carl Lewis after he sets 100 meters world record in the July 1988 US Olympic trials in Indianpolis, IN
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