Like most of us runners, she simply loved the freedom and strength and challenge of the sport. Switzer had not set out to break feminist ground. Switzer was there at the start line to cheer us on. “The joke among woman is, if any sex organs are in danger of injury from sports, it’s got to be guys.’ ”I was one of more than 2,100 women racing in the Niagara Falls Women’s Half-Marathon. “I had a gynecologist tell me after my sixth marathon, ‘You are in danger of prolapsing your uterus’,” Switzer told me as I warmed up this past Sunday. A woman who even attempted to run 42.2 kilometres was either crazy or suicidal, and in both cases disgraceful.Īfter Switzer finished the race, she got loads of hate mail of the “Who the hell do you think you are” kind. The 800-metre women’s race had recently been reinstated as an Olympic event after a 30-year hiatus because it was considered too straining for the female body. Long-distance running of any kind was considered unsuited to the delicate second sex. He was the race organizer, and up ’til then, every marathon in North America had been an after-supper club affair: men only. At mile two, a miserable man named Jock Semple tried to drag her off the course, shouting “Get the hell out of my race.” Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon.
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