pakwera.blogg.se

I wasn’t doing anything to defraud them - that’s how I signed my name.” “My name was misspelled on my birth certificate by my wonderful father. “I’ve been signing my name with my initials for a long time,” Switzer says. She saw nothing about gender, and signed up as K.V. Switzer looked in the marathon’s rulebook.

Watch the video above to hear how far Switzer went to win Briggs’ challenge.īefore 1967, no woman had ever officially registered and run the Boston Marathon. The bet was on, and Switzer later far succeeded the 26.2 miles in practice. Briggs told her if she could prove to him in practice that she could run the 26.2 miles, he’d be the first one to take her to Boston. Switzer was shocked but didn’t change her mind. “He said, ‘No woman can run a marathon!’” “I told him I wanted to run it, too,” Switzer says. “He took me under his wing and coached me every day to run longer and not worry about going fast," Switzer said.Īs they ran together, Briggs spoke about running the Boston Marathon. He was also Syracuse’s mailman and an ex-marathon runner. The volunteer coach was 50-year-old Arnie Briggs. That’s against NCAA rules, but we’d welcome you to come work out with the team.’” Switzer accepted the offer, training with the men’s team and its volunteer coach. “I went and asked the track coach if I could run on the men’s track team,” Switzer remembers. She had been running since grade school, but her university had no women’s sports.

Switzer was a student at Syracuse University. “He was angry because he was an overworked race director, and frankly, he was a product of his time.” “The race director attacked me simply because I was a woman and because I was wearing a bib number,” Switzer told Humankind. He was trying to pull off her bib with her race number on it. The race official ran up behind Switzer, shouting and clawing at her sweatshirt. It was 1967 and women didn’t run marathons. Watch Video: The moment that changed women’s runningĪ mile and a half into Kathrine Switzer’s first Boston Marathon, she was attacked by a race official.