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162 RACING INTO THE STORM Roberta Gibb, Kathrine Switzer, and Women’s Marathoning —OREN RENICK AND LEA ROBIN VELEZ INTRODUCTION It was 1964—Freedom Summer. The nation was in turmoil. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and social unrest spawned upheaval and con- flict. It seemed the country was experiencing an internal temper tantrum of opposing forces and against all of the pent-up inequalities that had existed far too long. The unrest cut deep into the jugular of the country, and did not seem to leave any facet of life unscathed, including sports.Against this backdrop, two female runners, Roberta Gibb and Kathrine Switzer, emerged as the symbols of equal access for women in the world of marathon competition, and together they challenged traditional feminine roles that had been entrenched for centuries. Roberta Gibb, as far as she was concerned, was not part of any struggle. It was 1964 when Gibb first witnessed the Boston Marathon.The Boston native was mesmerized with the sport and believed as an athlete, not a feminist, that if she wanted to run, she could. However, life was not that forthright and simple in the 1960s. It was not until February 1966, when Gibb applied to run the Boston Marathon,that she slammed headfirst into the locked gate of sexism. Race officials denied her entry because she was not a man. That injustice, that denial of her rights and the rights of all women who wanted to run and reach their potential as athletes, ignited a fire in Gibb that thrust her into a role she had not imagined. She had become a pioneer in women’s distance running. Gibb ignored the all-male tradition of the Boston Marathon and ran unof- ficially in the 1966 race. In 1967, Gibb again ran in the Boston Marathon, but this time she was not the only female runner. Kathrine Switzer ran as K. V. Switzer, number 261. Switzer began the race without the officials’ knowledge that she was a woman. She ran until an official was alerted to the news that a woman was running with a number. That official, Jock Semple, grabbed Switzer in an unsuccessful attempt to remove her from the course. A journalist photographed the struggle, and the picture of that incident was seen around Roberta Gibb, Kathrine Switzer, and Women’s Marathoning 163 the world and ignited a fury for fairness for women runners. Switzer went on to become the first official female to complete the Boston Marathon.1 That incident in 1967 made Switzer the symbol of the struggle for women to be recognized as legitimate athletes. The incident in and of itself was not earth-shattering, but Switzer’s run became something of a tipping point—or, as one author put it, that“little thing that can make a big difference.”2 Switzer’s race was not without controversy from her peers. Roberta Gibb believed the climate was warming for women to run before Switzer’s“illegal” entrance into the sport. Gibb blamed Switzer for making the running scene even more difficult for women.3 With the pivotal runs of the forerunners Gibb and Switzer, equal access for women runners became a united cry for justice. Gibb and Switzer, each in her own way, were soldiers in the marathon battlefield for equal access in the sixties, running for the rights of all women. This was a cry that could no longer be quieted by age-old myths of the shrinking violet woman and the image of the weak, incapable female. This was also against the tenets of how women were supposed to act and challenged traditional feminine roles and the roots of feminine learning ideologies. ROBERTA GIBB In developing a passion for distance running,Roberta“Bobbi”Gibb breached what writer E. J. Tisdell called “the values of the dominant culture.”4 Those values spelled out what was appropriate for women and what was not, and breaking through the gender barrier in sports that were historically the domain of men went against the grain of what was commonly accepted as feminine behavior. Aggressiveness and competition were masculine tendencies , while nurturance and passivity were labels worn by females.5 In other words, women were expected to commune and cooperate, not compete. But Gibb’s love for running fueled her desire to be recognized as a legitimate competitor. Born in 1943 and growing up in the suburbs of Boston, Gibb didn’t think...

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