# Run, Switzer, Run: The Women Who Broke the Marathon Taboo

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 5 Jul 2024, 36 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/d2e48cd7-b399-45c1-a444-b1a000be170b/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Until the 1960s, it was deemed too "dangerous" for women athletes to run distances longer than 200m - and a marathon would kill them, or leave them unable to have children. Rubbish, of course. But when Kathrine Switzer signed up for the 1967 Boston Marathon, it wasn't the distance that bothered her - it was the enraged race director trying to assault her. Thanks to pioneers like Kathrine, women have made huge strides in long distance running - and are now challenging the times of men in the very races they were banned from for so very long. For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com. Check out more Olympics related content from Pushkin Industries and iHeartPodcasts here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: Pushkin. This summer, Pushkin is going to the Olympics. Shows
[0:15] Speaker 1: across the network have got all sorts of stories to share,
[0:18] Speaker 1: including the latest on sports science in What's Your Problem,
[0:22] Speaker 1: a suite of swimmers on slight change of plans, a
[0:26] Speaker 1: Happiness Lab, conversation with a coach who coaches the coaches,
[0:29] Speaker 1: and an epic season of revisionist history about why in
[0:34] Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six America participated in Hitler's Olympics. Here on
[0:40] Speaker 1: cautionary Tales. Loyal listeners will already have heard the Battle
[0:44] Speaker 1: of Boots and Brothers featuring Adidas and Puma, with guest
[0:48] Speaker 1: appearances from Dick Fosbury, Jesse Owens and Pele. And now
[0:53] Speaker 1: sit back and listen to a cautionary tale about what
[0:56] Speaker 1: happens when women try to run long distance. Jasmine Paris
[1:05] Speaker 1: had sworn she'd never attempt the Spine Race. She was
[1:09] Speaker 1: a champion long distance runner, but the Spine Race was
[1:12] Speaker 1: something else. Two hundred and sixty eight miles up the
[1:16] Speaker 1: Pennine Way, the spine of England, carrying your bedding and
[1:20] Speaker 1: all your food and anything else you might need on
[1:22] Speaker 1: your back. Jasmine Paris had never raced over such a
[1:25] Speaker 1: long distance. The Spine Race is held in January, when
[1:29] Speaker 1: it's dark for sixteen hours a day. It's cold enough
[1:32] Speaker 1: that the route is often covered with snow, but not
[1:35] Speaker 1: quite cold enough to stay dry. Everything everything gets wet.
[1:41] Speaker 1: It's easy to lose your way as you whind through
[1:44] Speaker 1: and over the hills and moorlands of northern England, especially
[1:47] Speaker 1: if you're running at night. The race sounds hard, and
[1:52] Speaker 1: in practice it's nearly impossible. The first year it was
[1:56] Speaker 1: held in twenty twelve, eleven competitors tried their luck. Only
[2:01] Speaker 1: three finished. The fastest took nearly a week. The race
[2:07] Speaker 1: doesn't include enforced rest breaks, so if you keep running
[2:11] Speaker 1: while others are eating or sleeping, you can gain an
[2:15] Speaker 1: advantage if you can keep going. One runner described the
[2:20] Speaker 1: effects of sleep deprivation. I was totally confused. I didn't
[2:25] Speaker 1: know where I was, what I was doing, and I
[2:27] Speaker 1: didn't know I was taking part in this event. I
[2:30] Speaker 1: simply followed the footprints in the snow ahead of me.
[2:33] Speaker 1: It slowly dawned on me what I was doing, and
[2:35] Speaker 1: I repeated to myself a few times the Spine Race.
[2:39] Speaker 1: The Spine Race, at least Jasmine Paris was used to
[2:45] Speaker 1: sleep deprivation. She had a one year old daughter, she
[2:49] Speaker 1: was still breastfeeding and planned to pump milk during rest stops.
[2:54] Speaker 1: This was twenty nineteen, at which time the race was
[2:57] Speaker 1: a firm fixture in the ultramarathon calendar. There were more
[3:01] Speaker 1: than one hundred entrants, each with a GPS tracker and
[3:05] Speaker 1: an emergency button to summon help. In the half darkness
[3:10] Speaker 1: of half past eight the morning of Sunday, the thirteenth
[3:13] Speaker 1: of January, the contestants lined up. Some of them had
[3:17] Speaker 1: finished the race again and again, such as the twenty
[3:21] Speaker 1: thirteen winner Eugenie Rossello's Sole or the course record holder
[3:25] Speaker 1: Ian Keith. Both were favorites to win. Others had failed
[3:30] Speaker 1: to finish before but had come back to try again.
[3:35] Speaker 1: The Spine Race is brutal anyone man or woman, course
[3:40] Speaker 1: record holder or breastfeeding mum. Anyone can qualify to start,
[3:46] Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean everyone is going to make it
[3:49] Speaker 1: to the finish. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to
[3:54] Speaker 1: cautionary tales for sheer myth making about distance running. You
[4:23] Speaker 1: can't beat the marathon. After the Greeks unexpectedly smashed an
[4:28] Speaker 1: invading Persian Army at the Battle of Marathon. A chap
[4:31] Speaker 1: called Philippides ran twenty six miles to Athens with the
[4:35] Speaker 1: good news, and then, so the story goes, collapsed and died.
[4:42] Speaker 1: Thus began the legend of the marathon. This is a
[4:45] Speaker 1: race so grueling, a challenge so overwhelming that it could
[4:49] Speaker 1: literally kill you. The idea of the marathon as the
[4:53] Speaker 1: ultimate test of human endurance was embellished still further in
[4:58] Speaker 1: the London Olympics of nineteen Ohio, when a little Italian
[5:02] Speaker 1: pastry chef by the name of Drando Pietri entered the
[5:06] Speaker 1: stadium for the final lap with a comfortable lead. He
[5:10] Speaker 1: stopped as if stunned by the cheering, and began to
[5:14] Speaker 1: stagger towards the finish line, falling, blacking out, rousing himself
[5:20] Speaker 1: and staggering forward again. The creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir
[5:25] Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle, was on hand to describe the scenes.
[5:30] Speaker 1: It is horrible and yet fascinating, this struggle between a
[5:34] Speaker 1: set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame. Pietri kept going
[5:41] Speaker 1: and falling and rising again. He was right in front
[5:45] Speaker 1: of Doyle when he fell for what seemed the last time,
[5:50] Speaker 1: amid stooping figures and grasping hands. I caught a glimpse
[5:54] Speaker 1: of the haggard yellow face, the glazed expressionless eyes, long
[6:00] Speaker 1: black hair streaked across the brow. Surely he is done now,
[6:06] Speaker 1: he cannot rise again. And rise again he did, with
[6:10] Speaker 1: the assistance of numerous onlookers, his final desperate stagger across
[6:16] Speaker 1: the finish line immortalized by the camera. Pietr was, of
[6:22] Speaker 1: course disqualified for being helped to finish, and the legend
[6:26] Speaker 1: of the horrors of the marathon only grew. Philippides and
[6:32] Speaker 1: Dorando Pietry were, of course men. Women weren't allowed to
[6:38] Speaker 1: compete in the first Olympics, let alone in the marathon.
[6:41] Speaker 1: If it could kill a man, can you imagine what
[6:43] Speaker 1: it would do to the fragile frame of a woman.
[6:48] Speaker 1: The International Olympic Committee were reluctant to let women compete
[6:52] Speaker 1: in any events at all, and when they were finally
[6:55] Speaker 1: persuaded to admit female athletes in nineteen twenty eight, the
[7:00] Speaker 1: longest women's race was eight hundred meters. It was a disaster.
[7:06] Speaker 1: The newspapers of the day reported the disturbing scenes. The
[7:11] Speaker 1: New York Evening Post below us on the cinderpath were
[7:14] Speaker 1: eleven wretched women, five of whom dropped out before the finish,
[7:18] Speaker 1: while five collapsed after reaching the tape. Only six out
[7:23] Speaker 1: of eleven finishers, that's nearly as bad as the first
[7:27] Speaker 1: Spine race. The Chicago Tribune added that one finisher collapsed
[7:32] Speaker 1: into unconsciousness and required medical attention. A press syndicate reporter
[7:37] Speaker 1: commented it was not a very edifying spectacle to see
[7:41] Speaker 1: a group of fine girls running themselves into a state
[7:44] Speaker 1: of exhaustion. Other writers described the race as a disgrace
[7:49] Speaker 1: or dangerous, or opined that two hundred meters was surely
[7:54] Speaker 1: the maximum distance a woman could attempt without premature aging
[7:59] Speaker 1: anddamage to her reproductive capacity. But this is all, of
[8:05] Speaker 1: course nonsense, not just the stuff about damage to reproductive capacity,
[8:11] Speaker 1: all of it. There weren't eleven women in the race.
[8:14] Speaker 1: There were nine. Not only did the gold medalist, Lena
[8:17] Speaker 1: Radkebatschawer break the world record, but so did the silver
[8:21] Speaker 1: and bronze medalists and the three women behind them, Which is,
[8:26] Speaker 1: I suppose what happens when an event doesn't have many precedents.
[8:31] Speaker 1: Nobody dropped out and nobody needed a doctor, no matter,
[8:37] Speaker 1: Rather than celebrating the greatest women's middle distance race in history.
[8:42] Speaker 1: The pundits wrote whatever sensationalized nonsense they felt like writing.
[8:46] Speaker 1: The International Olympic Committee used the fuss as an excuse
[8:51] Speaker 1: to keep the women's eight hundred meters out of the
[8:54] Speaker 1: Olympics for the next three decades. The Spine Race starts
[9:02] Speaker 1: with a steep scramble uphill, and at first there was
[9:06] Speaker 1: a group of contenders all moving together, Eugenie Rossello, Sole,
[9:12] Speaker 1: Ian Keith, Jasmine Paris and a few others. At the
[9:16] Speaker 1: top was the confusing and directionless Peat moorland of kinder Scout,
[9:22] Speaker 1: the highest area in the peak district. Eugenie made a
[9:26] Speaker 1: break and accelerated off into the mist. There were days
[9:30] Speaker 1: of running ahead of them, and the rest of the
[9:32] Speaker 1: group felt confident that their reel him in over time.
[9:36] Speaker 1: It was tough going rain, a strong headwind, a difficult terrain,
[9:42] Speaker 1: and nearly fifty miles to the first checkpoint. By the
[9:46] Speaker 1: time they arrived, Paris and Keith the court, Sole and
[9:51] Speaker 1: all three had broken away from the field. They unpacked
[9:54] Speaker 1: food from their rucksacks, shoveling whatever they could manage into
[9:57] Speaker 1: their mouths. Jasmine Paris took a few minutes to express
[10:01] Speaker 1: some breast milk she really didn't fancy developing mastitis, and
[10:06] Speaker 1: then the three of them headed out together into the darkness.
[10:11] Speaker 1: The distance to the next checkpoint sixty one miles. If
[10:21] Speaker 1: women couldn't be allowed to run eight hundred meters until
[10:24] Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, you can imagine what the male dominated athletic
[10:29] Speaker 1: establishment of the nineteen sixties thought of the idea of
[10:32] Speaker 1: women running a marathon. But there were a few independent,
[10:36] Speaker 1: spirited women who liked to run, then, naturally enough, their
[10:40] Speaker 1: thoughts turned to that iconic distance. One of those women
[10:45] Speaker 1: was Catherine Switzer. As a girl, she told her father
[10:49] Speaker 1: she wanted to be a cheerleader. You don't want to
[10:52] Speaker 1: be a cheerleader, honey, he told her. Cheerleaders cheer for
[10:56] Speaker 1: other people. You want people to cheer for you. He
[11:00] Speaker 1: encouraged her to run a mile each day to get
[11:03] Speaker 1: fit for sports, and she did. She became a journalism
[11:07] Speaker 1: student at Syracuse, where there were no women's sports teams
[11:10] Speaker 1: at all, So she asked to train with a men's
[11:13] Speaker 1: cross country team. Sure, said the head coach, and then
[11:17] Speaker 1: she heard him laughing with the other coaches behind her
[11:20] Speaker 1: back that only made her more determined. More encouraging was
[11:25] Speaker 1: volunteer coach Arney Briggs, the university mailman and, at fifty
[11:30] Speaker 1: years of age, the veteran of fifteen Boston marathons. He
[11:35] Speaker 1: was full of stories about the classic marathon, which had
[11:38] Speaker 1: first been held in the late eighteen hundreds, and one
[11:42] Speaker 1: December night, on a miserable training run through a snow storm,
[11:46] Speaker 1: as cars skidded and honked around, Catherine heard one too
[11:51] Speaker 1: many of those tales. Let's quit talking about the Boston
[11:55] Speaker 1: Marathon and run the damn thing. No woman can run
[11:59] Speaker 1: the Boston Marathon. Why not, I'm running ten miles a night,
[12:04] Speaker 1: Arnie relented. No dame ever ran the Boston Marathon. If
[12:08] Speaker 1: any woman could do it, you could, but you'd have
[12:11] Speaker 1: to prove it to me if you ran the distance
[12:13] Speaker 1: in practice, I'd be the first to take you to Boston.
[12:17] Speaker 1: Now you're talking, she thought, a few months later, and
[12:21] Speaker 1: three weeks before the marathon, they ran thirty one miles
[12:25] Speaker 1: in training. Arnie turned gray and passed out, but Catherine
[12:30] Speaker 1: was feeling great. The next day, at Arne's insistence, she
[12:34] Speaker 1: signed up for the race, signing her name as she
[12:37] Speaker 1: always did, Ka V Switzer. She and Arnie checked the
[12:46] Speaker 1: rule book. There was nothing forbidding women to enter. Arne
[12:50] Speaker 1: signed up too, as did Catherine's boyfriend, Big Tom Miller,
[12:54] Speaker 1: all two hundred and thirty five pounds of him. He
[12:57] Speaker 1: was a promising hammer thrower, had been a serious college
[13:00] Speaker 1: football player. And no, he wasn't planning on training. He
[13:05] Speaker 1: was pretty fit anyway, and if a girl can run
[13:08] Speaker 1: a marathon, I can run a marathon. On Wednesday, April nineteenth,
[13:13] Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, racedown, it was snowing. Most of the
[13:18] Speaker 1: field were running in track suits. There were seven hundred
[13:22] Speaker 1: and forty one entrance, and Katherine pinned her number to
[13:26] Speaker 1: her sweatshirt with pride Kay Switzer two sixty one. From
[13:32] Speaker 1: the other runners, she got a few looks of surprise,
[13:34] Speaker 1: but a warm welcome. Hey, you're going to go the
[13:38] Speaker 1: whole way. Gosh, it's great to see a girl here.
[13:41] Speaker 1: Can you give me some tips to get my wife
[13:43] Speaker 1: to run? She'd love it if I could just get
[13:45] Speaker 1: her started. Arnie was beaming. Big Tom unmissible in his
[13:50] Speaker 1: bright orange Syracuse sweatshirt, wasn't happy that Katherine was wearing lipstick,
[13:56] Speaker 1: which might attract attention. Take it off, he said, I shan't,
[14:00] Speaker 1: she replied. The crowd of runners squeezed closer and closer
[14:05] Speaker 1: together as they approached the start, and then they were
[14:10] Speaker 1: off and feeling great. Just four miles later, the fun
[14:17] Speaker 1: would stop. Cautionary tales will be back after the break.
[14:30] Speaker 1: Catherine Switzer was running with her little group, including coach
[14:34] Speaker 1: Arnie and boyfriend Big Tom, feeling good and acknowledging the
[14:38] Speaker 1: encouragement of the other runners. But the four mile mark,
[14:42] Speaker 1: the press truck pulled alongside the little group to allow
[14:45] Speaker 1: photographers a good shot of that Dane who was running
[14:49] Speaker 1: the marathon. Then Switzer recalled a man with an overcoat
[14:54] Speaker 1: and felt hat was there in the middle of the road,
[14:56] Speaker 1: shaking his finger at me. He said something to me
[14:59] Speaker 1: as I passed and reached out for my hand, catching
[15:02] Speaker 1: my glove instead and pulling it off. He was it
[15:06] Speaker 1: the tester a crank, but he was wearing an official's ribbon.
[15:12] Speaker 1: Moments later, I heard the scraping noise of leather shoes
[15:16] Speaker 1: coming up fast behind me. When a runner hears that
[15:19] Speaker 1: kind of noise, it's usually danger. Instinctively, I jerked my
[15:22] Speaker 1: head around quickly and looked square into the most vicious face.
[15:26] Speaker 1: I'd ever seen a big man, a huge man with
[15:29] Speaker 1: bad teeth, was set to pounds. But before I could react,
[15:33] Speaker 1: he grabbed my shoulder and flung me back, screaming, get
[15:36] Speaker 1: the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.
[15:39] Speaker 1: Catherine was terrified. She realized she'd wet her pants in fear,
[15:44] Speaker 1: and she turned to sprint away as the furious official
[15:47] Speaker 1: tried to rip the number off her sweatshirt. The press
[15:51] Speaker 1: truck was still there, the cameras were whirring and clicking,
[15:54] Speaker 1: and then, seemingly from nowhere, two hundred and thirty five
[16:00] Speaker 1: pounds of orange clad college football player who crashed into
[16:04] Speaker 1: the official, who flew sideways and landed on the roadside
[16:08] Speaker 1: in a crumpled heap. Oh God, thought Catherine, Big Tom's
[16:14] Speaker 1: killed him. We're in trouble. Run like hell, yelled Arnie,
[16:19] Speaker 1: and they sprinted away from the scene, with a press
[16:21] Speaker 1: truck in pursuit, cameras still clicking. It was an extraordinary scene,
[16:28] Speaker 1: and perhaps the strangest thing about it. Katherine Switzer wasn't
[16:33] Speaker 1: the first woman to run a marathon. She wasn't the
[16:36] Speaker 1: first woman to run the Boston Marathon. In fact, she
[16:39] Speaker 1: wasn't even the leading woman in this race. A mile
[16:43] Speaker 1: ahead of her, Roberta. Bobby Gibb was making serene progress
[16:49] Speaker 1: without an irate race official insight. Bobby Gibb hadn't exactly
[16:56] Speaker 1: been welcomed into the Boston Marathon. She'd applied to run
[17:00] Speaker 1: the marathon the previous year, nineteen sixty six, and been
[17:03] Speaker 1: firmly rejected with a letter that explained to her women
[17:07] Speaker 1: are not physiologically capable of running a marathon. GiB crumpled
[17:12] Speaker 1: the letter and hurled it to the floor. It was ridiculous.
[17:16] Speaker 1: Bobby Gibb was regularly doing forty mile runs in the
[17:20] Speaker 1: countryside near Boston. I didn't know what to do. I
[17:24] Speaker 1: didn't have a coach, no books, nothing, I didn't have
[17:27] Speaker 1: any way of measuring distance, so I just went by time.
[17:31] Speaker 1: She told the BBC, my boyfriend would drop me off
[17:34] Speaker 1: on his motorbike and I'd run home. So two months
[17:38] Speaker 1: after throwing away the rejection letter, Bobby Gibb found herself
[17:42] Speaker 1: crouching in a bush near the start of the marathon.
[17:46] Speaker 1: Once half the men had started running, she stepped onto
[17:49] Speaker 1: the course and joined the crowd, disguised in a hoodie
[17:53] Speaker 1: and her brother's shorts. In nineteen sixty six. The race
[17:58] Speaker 1: was on a warm Ai April day before long, Bobby
[18:02] Speaker 1: Gibb shucked off her hoodie and was running in a
[18:05] Speaker 1: strappy vest top. I was so nervous, GiB recalled. I
[18:09] Speaker 1: didn't know what would happen. I thought I might even
[18:12] Speaker 1: be arrested. The men around her were quick to allay
[18:15] Speaker 1: her fears. They told her we won't let them. She
[18:19] Speaker 1: had no race number. She was running for the joy
[18:22] Speaker 1: of it, her long blonde ponytails swinging with the rhythm,
[18:26] Speaker 1: and the crowds cheering her as the news spread along
[18:30] Speaker 1: the course. As she passed the women's university Wellesley College,
[18:34] Speaker 1: the students roared their approval. As the distance grew, GiB
[18:40] Speaker 1: was scything through the field. She set her sub three
[18:43] Speaker 1: hour pace for much of the race, fast enough to
[18:47] Speaker 1: challenge for the first Olympic gold, but in the last
[18:51] Speaker 1: few miles her feet were shredded by the brand new
[18:54] Speaker 1: pair of men's running shoes she was wearing and training.
[18:59] Speaker 1: She usually woren no nurse's shoes because at a time
[19:02] Speaker 1: when sports shoe companies were engaged in cutthroat competition to
[19:06] Speaker 1: sell shoes to men, nobody could be bothered to make
[19:09] Speaker 1: running shoes for women. She slowed markedly, but kept going
[19:14] Speaker 1: to cross the line in three hours, twenty one minutes
[19:18] Speaker 1: and forty seconds. She didn't have a number, and she
[19:22] Speaker 1: didn't get an official timestamp, but she'd done it, and
[19:27] Speaker 1: two thirds of the men were still behind her. Maybe
[19:31] Speaker 1: the women couldn't just cover the distance. Maybe they could
[19:35] Speaker 1: teach the men a thing or two. In nineteen fifty four,
[19:41] Speaker 1: the women's record for a mile was a minute slower
[19:45] Speaker 1: than the men's record. Just days after Roger Banister broke
[19:50] Speaker 1: the four minute mile in Oxford, Diane Leather broke the
[19:54] Speaker 1: five minute mile not far away in Birmingham. By nineteen
[19:58] Speaker 1: ninety two, the men's le over the women had narrowed
[20:01] Speaker 1: from one minute to just twenty six seconds. The women
[20:06] Speaker 1: were catching up, and two scientists, Brian Whipp and Susan Ward,
[20:11] Speaker 1: published research claiming that if the rate of improvement in
[20:15] Speaker 1: elite women's running continued, then over the marathon distance, the
[20:20] Speaker 1: top women would be faster than the top men. As
[20:23] Speaker 1: soon as nineteen ninety eight, that didn't happen, and neither
[20:29] Speaker 1: does it look like it will. But what is true
[20:32] Speaker 1: is that over long distances, the typical female competitor has
[20:36] Speaker 1: never been closer to her male counterpart. In twenty twenty,
[20:42] Speaker 1: the International Association of Ultra Runners published the State of
[20:46] Speaker 1: Ultra Running twenty twenty, all about running over very long distances.
[20:52] Speaker 1: This report contained an eye catching claim once the race
[20:56] Speaker 1: is more than one hundred and ninety five miles, that
[21:00] Speaker 1: seven and a half marathons, the women run faster than
[21:04] Speaker 1: the men. I looked into this claim with my colleagues
[21:08] Speaker 1: from the BBC program more or less, and it's not
[21:11] Speaker 1: quite what it might seem at first sight. These aren't
[21:15] Speaker 1: the world record times, they're the average times, which really
[21:19] Speaker 1: tell you something about what kind of person tries an
[21:22] Speaker 1: ultra distance. In fact, the average speed of runners in
[21:26] Speaker 1: ultramarathons is getting slower. Why because more and more people
[21:31] Speaker 1: who are less and less superhuman for giving these distances
[21:35] Speaker 1: a try. More than five times as many men as
[21:39] Speaker 1: women run in races longer than fifty miles. So when
[21:44] Speaker 1: the report says that the women are faster at the
[21:46] Speaker 1: extreme distances, what they're saying is that the average female competitor,
[21:52] Speaker 1: one of a tiny handful of unbelievably badass women, is
[21:56] Speaker 1: faster than the average male competitor who comes from a
[21:59] Speaker 1: much larger pool, someone who might be operating under the
[22:04] Speaker 1: Big Tom school of race preparation. If a girl can
[22:08] Speaker 1: run a marathon, I can run a marathon. We've seen
[22:13] Speaker 1: a rapid improvement in women's times across all distances, and
[22:17] Speaker 1: there's no mystery as to why women weren't able to
[22:21] Speaker 1: compete for Olympic gold even over eight hundred meters until
[22:25] Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. They were being told in the nineteen sixties
[22:28] Speaker 1: that not only were they forbidden to run a marathon,
[22:32] Speaker 1: but that it would be dangerous for them to try.
[22:35] Speaker 1: The teenage Katherine Switzer was told by her friends that
[22:38] Speaker 1: running even a mile a day might make her infertile
[22:42] Speaker 1: or turn her into a man. It took a determined
[22:46] Speaker 1: young woman to run at all, let alone attempt a marathon.
[22:50] Speaker 1: No wonder that once the world saw pioneers such as
[22:54] Speaker 1: Bobby Gibb and Katherine Switzer, more women felt able to
[22:58] Speaker 1: run long distances, and more organizations felt obliged to allow
[23:03] Speaker 1: them and later to support them. And no wonder that
[23:06] Speaker 1: when all this finally belatedly happened, women's times quickly improved,
[23:14] Speaker 1: and the irony was that it's in the very races
[23:17] Speaker 1: that women were told were impossible to complete, that they're
[23:20] Speaker 1: getting closest to the men. The ultra distances. Those extreme
[23:26] Speaker 1: distances give women a fighting chance. The result becomes dependent
[23:31] Speaker 1: less on lung capacity and muscle mass, where men have
[23:35] Speaker 1: a clear advantage, and more on luck, on resilience, and
[23:39] Speaker 1: on a tolerance for pain. But they don't. When the
[23:42] Speaker 1: human body is pushed to such extremes, anything can happen,
[23:47] Speaker 1: and sometimes it does. By the time they reached the
[23:55] Speaker 1: second Spine Race checkpoint, the course record holder Ian Keith
[24:00] Speaker 1: had dropped back a little. Eugenie Rozello Sole and Jasmine
[24:04] Speaker 1: Paris were running together. Paris tried to lose Solay after
[24:08] Speaker 1: the checkpoint. I was feeling strong and keen to run
[24:11] Speaker 1: on my own for a bit, but he caught up
[24:13] Speaker 1: with her by twilight at the end of the second day,
[24:16] Speaker 1: and they ran on together through the darkness, the path
[24:20] Speaker 1: ahead illuminated by their head torches. Checkpoint four was well
[24:25] Speaker 1: over half way through the race, but there was still
[24:29] Speaker 1: more than eighty miles to go. It was a moment
[24:32] Speaker 1: to stop and to think ahead. As she wolfed down
[24:36] Speaker 1: Lasagna Jasmine Paris looked over at Eugenie. He was getting
[24:41] Speaker 1: a massage and perhaps a little nap. There were still
[24:45] Speaker 1: one and a half hours of daylight left. She pulled
[24:49] Speaker 1: on her shoes, shouldered her rucksack, and set out to
[24:53] Speaker 1: try to put some distance between them. Cautionary tales would
[24:58] Speaker 1: be back for the break. Shortly after Bobby Gibb crossed
[25:16] Speaker 1: the sun kissed finish line of the nineteen sixty six
[25:20] Speaker 1: Boston Marathon, the state governor warmly shook her hand and
[25:24] Speaker 1: she was invited by her fellow runners for the traditional
[25:27] Speaker 1: post race stue. It all seemed to be going well
[25:30] Speaker 1: until she was turned away at the door of the
[25:32] Speaker 1: dining room. Sorry, men, only that figures. Bobby Gibb decided
[25:40] Speaker 1: that next year she'd do it all again. In the
[25:43] Speaker 1: wintry cold of the nineteen sixty seven race, GiB didn't
[25:47] Speaker 1: match the pace of her first run, but she still
[25:50] Speaker 1: comfortably beat the three and a half hour mark. As
[25:53] Speaker 1: she crossed the finish line again, running without a number
[25:57] Speaker 1: or an official entry, she had no idea of the
[26:01] Speaker 1: drama that had been unfolding behind her on the course.
[26:04] Speaker 1: As the race officials tangled with Catherine Switzer. It turns
[26:09] Speaker 1: out that registering for the race was the problem. Switzer
[26:13] Speaker 1: had assumed it was the right thing to do, but
[26:16] Speaker 1: the short tempered race director was panicking that it'd be
[26:19] Speaker 1: sanctioned by the Athletics Union. She watched in shock and
[26:23] Speaker 1: amazement as the race director tried to rip her numbers
[26:26] Speaker 1: off and her massive boyfriend body checked him into the
[26:29] Speaker 1: next county. Catherine felt like she was going to puke.
[26:33] Speaker 1: This wasn't what she'd imagined. Was all going horribly wrong.
[26:38] Speaker 1: The press truck was still tracking her, given the incredible
[26:41] Speaker 1: scene that had just unfolded, The journalists were yelling out
[26:45] Speaker 1: hostile questions. This was obviously just a stunt, so when
[26:48] Speaker 1: was she going to drop out? But as they kept running,
[26:52] Speaker 1: her nausea drained away, to be replaced by cold anger.
[26:58] Speaker 1: The race director had tried to fit physically rip her
[27:00] Speaker 1: out of the race. Screw him. There was absolutely no
[27:04] Speaker 1: way that anyone was going to stop her from finishing.
[27:08] Speaker 1: The official bus drove past again, the race director, thankfully
[27:12] Speaker 1: very much alive, puce with rage and shaking his fist.
[27:17] Speaker 1: Catherine started to worry that they'd be arrested, and above all,
[27:21] Speaker 1: she was worried that she wouldn't be able to finish.
[27:25] Speaker 1: She told her coach Arnie that she was determined to
[27:28] Speaker 1: go the distance, even if she had to crawl, and
[27:32] Speaker 1: Arnie told her, fine, just slowed down a little. It
[27:36] Speaker 1: was cold and wet, and the official had pulled off
[27:40] Speaker 1: her gloves so her left hand was freezing. And then
[27:44] Speaker 1: Big Tom spoke up, you're getting me into all kinds
[27:48] Speaker 1: of trouble. What are you talking about, Tom, I've hit
[27:52] Speaker 1: an official. Now I'll get kicked out of the Athletics Union.
[27:56] Speaker 1: I didn't hit the official. You hit the official. Tom.
[27:59] Speaker 1: Oh great, Yeah, thanks a lot for nothing. I should
[28:01] Speaker 1: never have come to Boston. It was your idea to
[28:03] Speaker 1: come to Boston. And with that Tom ripped off his
[28:08] Speaker 1: numbers and hissed, you run too slow anyway, and he
[28:12] Speaker 1: sped away up the course, man handled by an official,
[28:17] Speaker 1: harassed by photographers, wet pants, cold hand, dumped by her boyfriend,
[28:23] Speaker 1: and only twenty miles to go. But as the miles
[28:27] Speaker 1: went past, the adrenaline drained away and Catherine found her pace.
[28:33] Speaker 1: She began to enjoy the run again and some way
[28:37] Speaker 1: passed the halfway mark, looming out of the mist ahead
[28:41] Speaker 1: of her was the unmistakable orange sweatshirt of Big Tom.
[28:46] Speaker 1: He was walking and as Catherine ran past, he begged
[28:51] Speaker 1: her to give him a moment to catch his breath.
[28:54] Speaker 1: Walk with me a while. I'll get it back. Sorry, Tom,
[28:58] Speaker 1: said Catherine. She had her momentum, She had her race
[29:03] Speaker 1: to finish. She ran on the Spine Race final checkpoint,
[29:12] Speaker 1: forty two miles to go. Jasmine Paris had a decision
[29:16] Speaker 1: to make. She had been running for three days, and
[29:20] Speaker 1: she'd had three hours of sleep. She was starting to hallucinate.
[29:26] Speaker 1: She'd seen a tree bend down into a yoga pose.
[29:29] Speaker 1: She saw a bright pink pig running across the moors.
[29:35] Speaker 1: Like other runners in previous years, should go through phases
[29:38] Speaker 1: of forgetting that she was even in a race at
[29:41] Speaker 1: alone leading it. So should she get some rest an
[29:47] Speaker 1: hour of sleep, or should she press her advantage trying
[29:52] Speaker 1: to extend her lead. After grabbing some more food and
[29:55] Speaker 1: a strong coffee, she pressed on. When Eugenie arrived at
[30:01] Speaker 1: the checkpoint, he asked where Jasmine was. No, no, no,
[30:06] Speaker 1: she's gone, said one of the checkpoint volunteers. Gone. Wow.
[30:14] Speaker 1: Eugenie soaked his feet in a basin of water, put
[30:17] Speaker 1: his head in his hands. The course record holder Ian
[30:22] Speaker 1: Keith was hours behind them both. When Catherine Switzer and
[30:30] Speaker 1: her coach Arne crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon,
[30:34] Speaker 1: there weren't many spectators left. It was cold and wet,
[30:39] Speaker 1: and they'd been running for more than four hours. There
[30:43] Speaker 1: were a few grumpy journalists who ordinarily would have gone
[30:46] Speaker 1: indoors to file their stories an hour ago, but had
[30:50] Speaker 1: been told to wait and get an interview with that
[30:52] Speaker 1: crazy Dame. Catherine had been slower than she'd hoped, but
[30:58] Speaker 1: under the circumstances, get to the finish line was an achievement. Enough.
[31:04] Speaker 1: Her feet were bleeding so badly that the race doctor
[31:07] Speaker 1: was shocked, but a rule, Catherine felt great. All they
[31:12] Speaker 1: had to do then was wait another hour for Big
[31:16] Speaker 1: Tom to cross the finish line. Neither Bobby Gibb nor
[31:24] Speaker 1: Catherine Switzer set out to change the world, but between
[31:28] Speaker 1: them they did. The photograph of Bobby Gibb running down
[31:32] Speaker 1: the home stretch in nineteen sixty six was inspirational, but
[31:38] Speaker 1: even more iconic was the image of Switzer being attacked
[31:42] Speaker 1: by a race official. In nineteen sixty seven, he gave
[31:46] Speaker 1: the world one of the most galvanizing photos in women's
[31:49] Speaker 1: rights history, said Switzer, and it's hard to disagree. Both
[31:53] Speaker 1: photographs and both women provided leverage to campaigners who persuaded
[31:59] Speaker 1: the authorities to chase the rules. In nineteen seventy two,
[32:05] Speaker 1: Nina Cusick was the first woman to officially win a
[32:09] Speaker 1: Boston Marathon, while Bobby Gibb has been retrospectively recognized as
[32:14] Speaker 1: a three time winner. GiB told the BBC back then,
[32:19] Speaker 1: men weren't allowed to have feelings and women weren't allowed
[32:22] Speaker 1: to have a brain. What if a man wants to knit,
[32:25] Speaker 1: is he any less of a man? No? What if
[32:28] Speaker 1: a woman wants to drive a truck? Is she any
[32:31] Speaker 1: less of a woman? No? All people can be who
[32:35] Speaker 1: they want to be. The Spine Race had started on
[32:42] Speaker 1: Sunday morning. By Wednesday evening, Jasmine Paris was limping down
[32:48] Speaker 1: off the final summit towards the finish line. Every step
[32:53] Speaker 1: was agonizing. She had developed tendonitis on both legs and
[32:58] Speaker 1: her pace was flagging. She kept looking over her shoulder
[33:02] Speaker 1: at the horizon, looking for Eugenie Rosello sole I kept
[33:07] Speaker 1: expecting him to catch me because I felt that I
[33:09] Speaker 1: was going so slowly on that last day, I kept
[33:12] Speaker 1: falling asleep and thinking he must be just behind me.
[33:16] Speaker 1: Eugenie was not just behind her. Sleep deprived, exhausted, and
[33:23] Speaker 1: dangerously cold, he pushed his emergency Buttom to quit the
[33:27] Speaker 1: race and summon help. With two hundred and sixty four
[33:31] Speaker 1: miles completed and four miles to go, and by then
[33:37] Speaker 1: Jasmine Paris had long since finished after the solitude of
[33:43] Speaker 1: the Pennine Way, the finish line was bewildering a crowd
[33:47] Speaker 1: of people, the flashes of cameras, a very clingy cuddle
[33:51] Speaker 1: with her daughter Rowan, a shower, and then the fish
[33:54] Speaker 1: and chips Jasmine had been dreaming of, and the breast
[33:57] Speaker 1: feed that Rowan had been demanding. Dazed, Jasmine started to
[34:03] Speaker 1: realize why people were quite so excited. She had obliterated
[34:08] Speaker 1: Ian Keith's course record by more than twelve hours, about
[34:13] Speaker 1: fifty miles. Ian Keith himself wouldn't win the men's race
[34:18] Speaker 1: until the next morning, fifteen hours later. Still, there wasn't
[34:24] Speaker 1: too much time to celebrate. Jasmine's PhD thesis was due
[34:30] Speaker 1: in ten weeks. It wasn't going to write itself. Key
[34:44] Speaker 1: sources for this episode were Jasmine Paris's first hand account
[34:48] Speaker 1: of the Spine race, Olivier Gieberteau's feature article about Bobby Gibb,
[34:53] Speaker 1: and Catherine Switzer's autobiography Marathon Woman. For a full list
[34:58] Speaker 1: of our sources, see the show notes Timharford dot com.
[35:12] Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
[35:16] Speaker 1: It's produced by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust.
[35:20] Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of
[35:22] Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the
[35:27] Speaker 1: voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Jammas
[35:32] Speaker 1: Saunders and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been
[35:36] Speaker 1: possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne,
[35:41] Speaker 1: Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary Tales is
[35:46] Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios
[35:51] Speaker 1: in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show,
[35:54] Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate and review, tell your friends,
[36:00] Speaker 1: and if you want to hear the show ad free,
[36:02] Speaker 1: sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in
[36:05] Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot fm, slash plus

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