Patriots Day and First Boston Marathon
Hello, it’s April 19, 2013. It's the date the Boston Marathon was run for the first time.
The 1897 race was inspired by the Olympic Games held in Athens the year before, and adhered to the distance run in 1896 – slightly under 25 miles. Without a starting gun, a Boston Athletic Association official simply looked at the 15 runners towing the starting line and said, “Go.”
The first man to finish, 2 hours and 55 minutes later, was a New Yorker named John J. McDermott - in a field of men only.
From the start, the Boston Marathon was meant to honor Patriots' Day – and it did - but over the years it also served as a marker of human progress in ways that would catch even the race organizers by surprise.
John McDermott’s winning time wouldn’t be considered fast today, but it was the fastest until that time – and it was a faster pace than Paul Revere had traveled on horseback. The winning times would keep coming down, even as the distance got longer, the fields larger, the race internationalized, and the makeup of the competitors much more representative of the mosaic of the human family.
In 1966, a New England native named Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb inquired about running in the race. The response she got – that the female physiology wasn’t conducive to distance running – was unsatisfactory. Gibb, then living in California with her husband, had been training for the Boston Marathon for two years – running, on some occasions, 40 miles in a day.
Undeterred, she flew to Boston, had her mother drive her to the race, borrowed her brother’s Bermuda shorts and donned a hoodie to cover up her one-piece swimsuit. She then hid in the bushes near the rest of the runners. After the starter’s gun went off, she took her place at the start, about mid-pack and began running.
Those runners in her flight soon noticed they were running with a woman – and to a man they offered encouragement. Buoyed by their response, Gibb took off the sweatshirt. The crowds along the route picked up the spirit of Bobbi Gibb’s feat, and began cheering her. By the time she crossed the finish line in 3 hours, 21 minutes and 40 seconds – faster than two-thirds of the men in the race – Massachusetts Gov. John Volpe was waiting to shake her hand.
Gibb was pictured on the front page of the April 20, 1966, Boston Record-American with the headline, “Hub Bride First Gal to Run Marathon.”
The Boston Athletic Association was slow to grasp what was happening. The following year, a 19-year-old Syracuse University journalism student named Kathrine Switzer was entered in the race after registering as “K. V. Switzer.” She was given the number 261.
When they learned what was happening, BAA officials lost their minds. Two of them, Will Cloney and Jock Semple, tried to physically remove her from the race. “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!” Semple growled at Switzer, while lunging for her.
But Switzer was running with her boyfriend, Tom Miller, a muscular football player and hammer thrower, and he sent Semple flying with a body block. Switzer finished the race in 4 hours and 20 minutes. It was an hour behind Bobbi Gibb, who ran again unofficially, but it was the images of Switzer being jostled that were circulated worldwide. Another barrier to human progress was about to fall.
The idea that we build on the accomplishments – but also the sacrifice of others – reflects the essential spirit of the marathon. The original runner, Philippides, collapsed upon completing his course. His last words, “Rejoice, we conquer!” ring in our hearts today, as we already anticipate the 2014 Boston Marathon.
