You see, forty-five years ago, women weren’t allowed to run Boston, or any marathon for that matter. And the aspiring Olympic hammer thrower jumped in and with his 235 pound frame checked Jock Semple with such a force that he went flying off the road.Īnd we were terrified because he went down like a crumpled suit of clothes and my coach said, run like hell and down the street we went.Īnd in four hour, and twenty minutes, Kathrine Switzer crossed the finish line and became the first woman to officially finish the Boston Marathon. That person was Jock Semple, the race director of the Boston Marathon, who didn’t want a woman running in the raceīut Switzer’s boyfriend Tom Miller was running as well. And I quickly turned and just at that moment, this very very angry person was looming over me and just grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me back and screamed ‘get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers’ and began trying to rip the numbers off the front of my sweatshirt. On April 19 th, 1967, Kathrine Switzer almost didn’t finish the Boston Marathon her journey nearly came to a dramatic halt only two miles into the race.Īll of sudden I heard this scraping noise behind me.
Switzer was in New Hampshire this week to give the keynote address at the annual Women Building Community Luncheon in Manchester put on by the United Way of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and the Women’s Fund”Įxchange Executive Producer Keith Shields, sat down with her and has this look back gives this profile of Kathrine Switzer
But it was four photographs taken of Switzer’s famous altercation with a race director that day would spark a revolution not only in women’s running, but also in women’s rights. Forty-five years ago, on the eve of the Women’s liberation movement Kathrine Switzer made history by becoming the first women to ever ‘officially run’ the Boston Marathon.
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