Who are the first female marathoners?

Women have been in this tough track and field since the first races. But first, the story of the marathon…

Marathon is the name of the region where the Persian navy, which captured many cities in the Aegean islands, landed on Greek land, about 40 km northwest of Athens. The parties were not at all equal in the expedition, which was based on the justification of the Achaemenid king Darius to punish Athens and Eretria, which supported the Ionian cities that revolted against the Persian domination in the Western Aegean, but whose main purpose was to carry the Persian domination to the European mainland. The Persians had 25-100 thousand (or even 600 thousand according to some ancient sources) warriors compared to the 10-12 thousand infantry of the Athenians.

Marathon Battle

We know that the Athenians, who met them on the Marathon Plain with the Persian army on the shore, waited 5 days before starting the war. Intimidated by the overwhelming numerical superiority of the enemy, the Athenians send a messenger to Sparta to ask for help. This messenger, named Pheidippides, crossed the distance of approximately 240 km between Marathon and Sparta in one day(!) and conveyed his call for help to the Spartans. “The Spartans agreed to come to the aid of the Athenians; but this was not an immediate task, for they did not want to break the law; because it was just the ninth of the month and the ninth day of the month, they explained, the moon circle has not yet been filled, so there can be no expeditions. They were waiting for the full moon.”

Pheidippides, who received Sparta's reward, ran back the same way and returned to Marathon three days after his departure and informed that the Spartans could come to help only ten days later.

[The Athenian Pheidippides is mentioned in Herodotus as a "kerux", that is, a messenger; messengers who can run nonstop all day long to deliver a message are also called “hemerodromos”, obviously Pheidippides is one of them. Although it does not make sense for someone to run a total of 480 km in three days, 2,500 years later, in 2005, Greek-American Dean Karnazes - gave an organ to children. Pheidippides' Sparta run is also possible, considering that he ran 560 kilometers for 80 hours and 40 minutes non-stop.]

This is how the Marathon race is mentioned in Herodotus, the first ancient source to mention the Persian Wars. In the following centuries, however, this story takes a different form and Pheidippides' race to Sparta turns into the story of the messenger who, when the war ended, ran 40 km to Athens, heralding the victory over the Persians. Accordingly, the messenger said, “Victory, victory! We won!" After saying that, he collapses to where he is, exhausted from thirst and exhaustion, and takes his last breath.

Battle of Marathon It was lived in 490; The oldest known Olympic game is before that, BC. It dates back to 776. These encounters in honor of Zeus are named after Olimpia, where the games were held. Interestingly, M.S. Although there were some long-distance endurance races, the marathon did not take place in the Olympics, which were held every four years until 393. The first marathon race dates back much more recently, to the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

First Marathon

The 1896 Summer Olympics, or officially the First Olympic Games, were held in Athens, the capital of Greece, between 6-15 April 1896. In order to increase interest in the games started with the initiative of the French Pierre de Coubertin, the 40-kilometer marathon is added to the races.

Stamata Revithi (1866 – after 1896) was a Greek woman who ran the 40-kilometre marathon during the 1896 Summer Olympics. The Games excluded women from competition, but Revithi insisted that she be allowed to run.

[In the first four Olympics, the marathon is 40 km. The conversion of this distance to 42,195 meters is with the London Olympics in 1908. It is said that the organizers, who wanted to please the King of England Albert Edward, who wanted the marathon race to start from Windsor Castle, set the standard marathon distance of 42,195 meters between the Castle and the Olympic Stadium, and the same length was maintained in the subsequent games.]

The 1896 Olympics, just like the ancient Olympics, was a men's game; There is not a single woman in the games in which 241 athletes from 14 countries participated. But before the marathon run, an interesting event occurs. A 30-year-old woman named Stamata Revithi tries to register for the competition with her baby in her arms, but is turned down on the excuse that she missed the deadline; The main reason is that she is a woman.

Then he decides to run the Stamata Revithi marathon alone, after the men. Stamata, who ran 40 kilometers in her long skirt and long-sleeved dress with wooden sole sandals, managed to complete the marathon in 5 and a half hours, which is better than 8 of the 24 male athletes participating in the competition. Not entering the Panathinaiko Stadium, where the run was to end, this extraordinary woman, who completed the remaining few hundred meters by running around the stadium, said, “Actually, I would have come earlier, but I lingered a little in the shops on the way!” she says with a laugh, just after finishing the race.

Stamata Revithi is not an athlete, and her participation in the Olympics is not out of love for sports, but rather out of desperation. A newly widowed Stamata living in a village near Athens, after her 7-year-old son dies of malnutrition, sets off for Athens in hopes of finding a job with her 17-month-old baby in her arms. On the way, an athlete training for the next day's races takes care of her, and after giving her some money - perhaps as a joke - he offers to join the marathon race, if she can complete the race she will be famous and will be able to find a job more easily. This idea is also in the mind of Stamata, who is in a desperate situation, as a young girl, she can run long distances, if not 40 km. If She can finish the race across the finish line in the stadium, she hopes someone from the Royal family or Olympic committee will take pity on her and give her a job to work on.]

We don't know what happened next to this extraordinary woman who ran a marathon in the first Olympics – even if it was out of competition. But one wants to hope that this woman, who can run a marathon with her sandals in order to find a job, has definitely found a way to stay afloat.

Marathon running women come back…

More than 15,000 women participated in the first Women's World Games held in Paris in 1922.

In 1926, London's Violet Piercy runs the first women's marathon registered with the International Athletic Federation, with a time of 3 hours and 40 minutes.

At the 1928 Olympics, women were allowed to compete in track and field, although many were short distances.

In 1967, Katherine Switzer becomes the first woman to officially enter and finish the Boston Marathon, the oldest long-distance running in the United States.

Kathrine Switzer began athletics at the age of 19 while studying journalism at Syracuse University in New York. Kathrine Switzer, who participated in training with male athletes at the university, which does not have a women's team, sent her name to the Boston Marathon committee for her participation application, as “K.V. Switzer ”and not realizing that she is a woman, she gets approval to participate from the committee.

On the day of the race, the university's athletic trainer distributes the chest numbers he received from the committee for the whole team, and the young woman mingles with the hundreds of male athletes gathered at the starting point with the chest number "K Switzer 261" written on it.

The marathon begins with the detonation of the start gun. The first kilometers pass smoothly, and even when she realizes that most of the people waiting along the way are women, they encourage her with applause. However, a committee member who noticed her while she was running the 7th km ran after her, attacked the young woman, and tried to force her out of the race. With the help of her trainer and her boyfriend, who also participated in the race, Kathrine Switzer, who got away from the attacker, accelerates and continues running.

Kathrine Switzer crosses the finish line 4 hours and 20 minutes after the start of the race. The waiting journalists shower the young woman with questions:

“-What was the reason for participating in this race?

  -Because I love running.

  -Okay, but why did you sign up for the Boston Marathon for that?

  Because women deserve to run here too.

  -Will you run again?

  -Yes.

  They will disqualify your team.

  -Then we'll form another team."

Although the race committee does not want to record Kathrine Switzer's rating at first, she eventually has to give up because there is no provision in the written competition rules that women cannot participate in the race; It never occurred to men who set the rules that a woman would want to participate in a marathon.

After this race, as a result of the clamor of the traditionalist -and sexist-press and conservative public opinion, women are prohibited from participating in any athletics races with men. However, women's struggle against this continues and in 1972 women are officially eligible to participate in the Boston Marathon.

However, discrimination and contempt are not over. Six women participate in the 1972 marathon, but they are required to start their run 10 minutes before the men, a kind of advance. Something interesting happens when the women's starting pistol goes off, all female athletes sit on the ground! They wait, until the start signal is given for the men, then they start running with the men.

May your run never stop, Ladies!