i don't show it to you. in a few days' time she wants to run this race again fifty years after the original event. and watching it and then they watch the race right at. nine hundred sixty six i heard from a friend of mine who ran cross country about an event called the boston marathon and it lodged in my brain that someday i would really love to do that and i said to him hey did a girl run the boston marathon too and he said yes in one thousand nine hundred sixty six bobby give jumped out of the bushes and ran the race bobby give who'd run the boston mass in one year before katherine but without an official number she got onto the track from a hiding place and i said well that's great see a woman can do it twenty six miles forty two kilometers sure. her father encouraged the young katherine to do long distance running despite the many prejudices.

people still whispered about the medical implication you know that maybe you're going to turn into a man maybe you are a man or that you're going to get big legs or that your uterus is going to fall out you'll never have children all of these things were myths that held women back and made them afraid and also made men say we have to protect women we can't let them do these long distance things we don't want them to hurt themselves. in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven only men were officially allowed to run the mountain and yet switzer registered for boston so i filled out the entry form but i signed it of course how i signed my name k.v. switzer and when the entry form when they thought it was from a man i didn't know that it wasn't intentional i was only going to boston to run. the beginning the beginning of the race the day was like no other boston marathon

zero marathons we go went to the starting line is so are some people some people we didn't know interviewed. came back. we we went up and then they we went on a bus the press bus after about two or three miles it warmed up and everyone was taking off the hoods and the buses the buses going by a pack and suddenly a boston writer said. jock there's a woman in your race. john christy. he's used various beat beat he didn't know what to say so he said stop the bus stop the bus off of this bus behind me came one of the co race directors his name was jock sample and the men on the bus the journalists had been teasing him saying hey look john there's a girl in your race she's wearing big numbers jock sample jumped off the truck and

went to grab the number and as he did that i actually didn't see him coming and i didn't hear him until the last minute when i heard these leather shoes in a different pace from the rubber shoes and i turned like this and i saw this face and as i turned i got away from him then he grabbed my shirt was pulling it and went for the one on the back and in fact this is the one that was on the back and he caught the outside corner right here and with that my boyfriend who happened to be a two hundred thirty five pound ex all-american football player came running full tilt and hit the official like this jock and sent him flying. i saw tom hit him and at the same time when i saw tom hit him i saw him come flying across in front of me and i actually i i must misremember this because the video

doesn't show this but i remember hitting him with my knee was really really embarrassing and scary i was really quite terrified i didn't know what to do i felt like i had stepped into some sacred place and messed it up somehow i felt terribly unwelcome and i just for a split second thought maybe i should step often and go home and then i thought no if i if i step off the course if i don't finish this race. i don't stay in the race no matter what people are going to say women can't do this when it happened we weren't frightened on the press bus we were taking notes like crazy you know it's the we know there was this is big it was big we didn't know how big it would become it was is this a become one of the great things in sports and sports in sports history let's be honest with the the rise of women to equality.

one journalist said what are you trying to prove and i said i'm not trying to prove anything but i will tell you something that one day women is running is going to be as popular and publicize a bill as men's and i said i'll be back at boston. it was the start of a long battle for equality it wasn't until nine hundred seventy two that women were officially allowed to participate in the boston marathon. in germany sports physicians outfront aachen paved the way for the women's marathon aachen proved that women had more in junior it's. just a little of the form of female mouth and world record holder christa violins each and her former coach manfred stefani meet again in the late sixty's christa violin sic was a medium distance runner my friend stephanie has kept all the articles from those days. so misstepped there were no long distances for me back then i ran the longest

distance available that was fifteen hundred meters and eight hundred before that in one thousand nine hundred eighty seven when the first women participated in marathons i had heard of this event but i hadn't taken any interest in it were interested in the moment. women women running women running a marathon is not an entirely new phenomenon in recent years bills have snuck into such competitions from time to time a competition reserved for men since four hundred ninety b.c. but those were isolated cases however that the strong sex accepted with generosity in a benign smile they were a curiosity. and stuff i. always thought women should run marathons and that they would be better relatively speaking than man or does he really pushed that force yet he was also the first to introduce the women's marathon in one thousand nine hundred ninety three i don't prefer to earn stock and came forward

with medical evidence that showed women had natural capacity and endurance and stamina he was a doctor a physician so his work and his research gave us so much credibility and that was an amazing discovery that helped convince many many people in a simple way that women could be superior and fun arkan conducted further research into the in durance capacity of women. i know you believe that women can cope with these stresses can you explain that. so first of course women can cope with these stresses their muscle composition makes them superior here and then have too much muscle mass and therefore too much water only twenty three percent of the woman's body weight just muscle that means less water she has more subcutaneous fat reserves. valid neo is a small town on the lower rhine than arkan put on the first marathon just for women

here. he made phone calls and convinced women to participate the aim was to prove that women could run a marathon it was part of women's emancipation a months apart see on. the new marathon distance was perfect for cristoval and sick knee coffer schlager she started her long distance running career in the seventy's. coached by her fellow club member manfred stefani christer cover schlager has achieved an incredible result ten minutes before the finish line she separated from the leading pack and created a lead of almost two kilometers just before crossing the finish line she looks like she's running a few hundred metres on a training run looking completely fresh and running with excellent style she's heading towards a new european record. you're not completely exhausted no not in any way dr van ark

and this confirms your theory that women are also suited to running marathons definitely i follow the race particularly over the last ten thousand meters during which most runners performance drops she was the fastest. i remember two men accompanied us some bicycles and always slow to sit down so we wouldn't run too fast and would reach the finish line as you really felt like the press was just waiting for us to drop like flies but we all crossed the finish line just fine. it was a milestone for many years we were leaders and women's marathon running along with the united states and that america was our risk up there were no other americans but half a year later dr fun been invited to participate in the boston marathon which he paid for to see what the first time i think i heard of him was when. set a world record in the women's marathon and i was so excited to read about this and

then it seemed that somebody else from germany was always coming through as the great christa fallen sick and then he brought them to boston and they performed so incredibly well here.