![]() ![]() Once you got to university, it was all over for girls.” said Switzer. I had been running, I had been playing field hockey, but that was going to be it. “I knew I was never going to be allowed to be an athlete. A woman becoming a professional athlete seem ed impossible at the time. She wanted to be a sports journalist, as it seemed to be her only way to work in the sports industry. Switzer was studying journalism at Syracuse University. I realised ‘I'm going to change the system’, and that’s when it became political to me”. The images of Semple attacking the lone woman on the course went global, exposing the ugly sexism in sport and turning Switzer into an equality icon for female athletes.At this point, I realised other women would be there if they only had opportunities. The marathon began well, but about five kilometres in, race manager Jock Semple famously leapt off a media bus monitoring the runners and lunged at Switzer, trying to rip the bib number 261 off her chest, and push her off the course. While women were technically not allowed to enter, she had entered under her initials KV Switzer, but did not try to hide the fact that she was a woman: she wore lipstick and earrings. It was snowing in April 1967 when Switzer lined up with her coach and then-boyfriend to start the Boston Marathon. Back then, women were considered physically incapable of running 42 kilometres and were therefore not eligible to enter the marathon. During training, her coach would entertain her with tales of running the Boston Marathon-one of the world’s most famous and prestigious long-distance races in the world. Switzer was a 20-year-old journalism student in 1967 and the first woman to join her university track and field running team. When Kathrine Switzer set out to run her first marathon she didn’t mean to start a revolution, she simply wanted to prove the boys wrong. Now, 50 years later, she’s still a force of empowerment. Running pioneer KATHRINE SWITZER was the first woman to complete a marathon, despite being told women weren’t capable of competing. It Started At The Finish Line VOGUE India | June 2018 ![]()
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