Boston 1967: The Bib They Tried to Rip Off Kathrine Switzer

01One entry form, two initials

Boston, 1967. The marathon is a men's affair: a year earlier, the organizers had turned away a woman applicant, explaining that the race belonged to the men's division alone. Kathrine Switzer, a student at Syracuse University, combs through the rule book and the entry form: nothing about the sex of the runners, she says. She signs the way she always signs, “K.V. Switzer.” The system swallows the form. She gets bib 261.

Her coach, Arnie Briggs, didn't bring her to Boston out of the goodness of his heart: first he wanted to see her run the distance in training. She did, and then some. By her account, she tacked on a five-mile loop for good measure, making it 31 miles. He was out of excuses.

02The rage

The start is uneventful. Then a press truck pulls in ahead of the runners, photographers on board. Jock Semple, race director for the Boston Athletic Association (BAA), spots a woman wearing an official bib. He charges. According to Switzer's account, he yells, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!” and tries to rip the bib off her.

Briggs tries to step in and is shoved aside. Enter Tom Miller, her boyfriend, running alongside her: a big guy, a former football player and hammer thrower, according to Switzer. He hits Semple with a body block and sends him off the side of the road. Kathrine runs on. She will not stop again.

03The photo

The photographers on the truck got everything, and the pictures make the front pages. On the drive back to Syracuse, she says, the group pulls over around 1 a.m., past Albany, and finds a newspaper with their photos on the front and back pages. A race meant to stay among men has just become a public affair.

She finishes in about 4:20. An unofficial time, naturally: officially, she wasn't supposed to be there.

04So who was the first woman to run Boston?

A year earlier, in 1966, Bobbi Gibb had already run Boston. Her application had been rejected, so she hid in the bushes near the start in Hopkinton, then slipped into the pack, without a bib. The BAA recognizes her as the first woman to have run the marathon. Switzer is the first to have received a bib. Two feats, two ways of doing it. Both count.

051972, then 2017

Women didn't officially run Boston until 1972: eight at the start, and Nina Kuscsik wins in 3:10:26. The same Kuscsik who, two years earlier, had dropped out of the very first New York City Marathon. Switzer finishes third (in 3:29:51, according to Boston.com's archives). Delicious twist: according to her, it's Jock Semple who hands her her trophy, broken. The two even end up becoming friends.

In 2017, at 70, she lines up again wearing 261 and finishes in 4:44:31. The next day, the BAA retires the number in a ceremony. According to the Associated Press, it is the first number officially retired in the race's history (No. 61 was already being kept out of circulation in honor of Johnny Kelley). Switzer summed it all up: “It was the worst thing in my life at the time. It became the best thing in my life.”