In April 1966, a 23-year-old woman named Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb crouched in the forsythia bushes near the Boston Marathon start line in Hopkinton. When the gun fired and the pack thundered past, she slipped out and joined the race. By the time she crossed the finish line on Boylston Street, she had run ahead of two-thirds of the men – and become the first woman ever to run the Boston Marathon.
That part of the story is reasonably well known. What is less well known is everything else.
Bobbi Gibb has been a long-distance runner, yes – but she is also a wilderness wanderer, a sculptor, a neuroscience researcher, and a lawyer. She trained for Boston by driving 3,000 miles across America with a malamute. She finished Boston twice before any other woman crossed the finish line. She sculpted the trophies that Joan Benoit Samuelson, Julie Brown, and Julie Isphording won at the first U.S. Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials. And earlier this year, runners in Hopkinton passed beneath a life-size bronze statue near the start line – a statue Gibb sculpted herself.
We were fortunate to have Bobbi on our live show in Boston this April which you can watch below, and we are grateful to her team for contributing additional material about her. For more about Bobbi Gibb and her sculptures and trophies, check out her website.
Here are ten things most people don’t know about the first lady of the Boston Marathon, Bobbi Gibb.
1. She is the only woman in the world known to have run a full marathon in 1966
Bobbi Gibb is, as far as anyone has ever documented, the only woman on earth to have covered 26.2 miles in a marathon during the year 1966. One woman, anywhere. The international significance of her Boston run is often missed. A
t the time, women were prohibited by the U.S.’s Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) from competing at distances longer than a mile and a half. The International Olympic Committee’s limit was even shorter: 800 meters.
And yet, since 1966, there has not been a single year when women have not run marathons. Today, hundreds of thousands of women run a marathon every year. The line traces back to one woman in a forsythia bush in Hopkinton.
2. She trained while driving 3,000 miles solo across the U.S. in a VW bus – with a wolflike malamute
This was not a typical marathon training plan. Originally planning to run the Boston Marathon in 1965, Gibb set off on a 3,000-mile solo journey west in a Volkswagen bus in the summer of 1964, her wolflike Alaskan malamute riding in the passenger’s seat.
Each day she stopped somewhere new and ran for miles through whatever landscape she had landed in – forests, farmland, prairies, sagebrush, mountain trails, the beaches of California. At night, she slept out under the stars.
3. She ran 65 miles of a three-day horseback riding event in Vermont – on foot
In 1965, as part of that same unconventional training, Gibb ran 65 miles of a three-day horseback ride through the mountains of Vermont: 40 miles on the first day, 25 miles on the second. She ran the same route that the horses traveled across mountain terrain.
4. She finished ahead of two-thirds of the men in 1966
Bobbi Gibb didn’t just finish the 1966 Boston Marathon – she beat most of the field. Her time placed her ahead of roughly two-thirds of the men who started that day. She passed runner after runner, for most of the 26.2 miles.
One of the people watching that day was Diana Chapman Walsh, a Wellesley College senior who would later become the college’s president. Years later, she described the moment word reached the Wellesley women lining the runners’ corridor through campus: “Like a spark down a wire, the word spread to all of us lining the route that a woman was running the course. For a while, the ‘screech tunnel’ fell silent. We scanned face after face in breathless anticipation until just ahead of her, through the excited crowd, a ripple of recognition shot through the lines and we cheered as we never had before. We let out a roar that day, sensing that this woman had done more than just break the gender barrier in a famous race.”
5. She finished Boston twice before Kathrine Switzer
Before her first race, Gibb had written to the Boston Marathon organizers requesting a number. The reply was a curt letter stating that women were not physiologically able to run 26.2 miles and were therefore barred from entering. She ran anyway.
Kathrine Switzer’s name is the one most often paired with women and the Boston Marathon – and her 1967 run, in which a race official tried to physically remove her from the course, is iconic. But Bobbi Gibb had already finished Boston twice by the time Switzer did. Gibb ran in 1966 and again in 1967, finishing about an hour ahead of Switzer in ’67.
6. In 1967, she walked openly to the start line
After her 1966 run, Gibb stopped hiding. In 1967 she did not crouch in the bushes — she lined up openly with the rest of the field at the start in Hopkinton and was warmly greeted by reporters and other runners. She returned again in 1968, finishing first among four women. Three years, three Boston Marathons, in a sport that officially still said women couldn’t run them.
7. She sculpted the trophies for the first U.S. Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials
In 1984, the United States held its first Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials. The bronze figurine trophies awarded to the top three finishers were sculpted by Bobbi Gibb. Joan Benoit Samuelson — who would go on to win gold in the inaugural Women’s Olympic Marathon in Los Angeles later that year — received Gibb’s first-place figurine. She still cherishes it.
8. The Boston Marathon retroactively named her a three-time women’s winner
Women weren’t officially allowed to run the Boston Marathon until 1972, when the courage of Gibb and the women and men who followed her — including Nina Kuscsik, the first official women’s winner — finally forced the rule to change.
In 1996, on the 30th anniversary of her breakthrough run and the 100th anniversary of the Boston Marathon, the B.A.A. officially recognized Gibb as the women’s winner in 1966, 1967, and 1968. They awarded her a medal and inscribed her name three times — alongside the names of all the other Boston Marathon champions — on the Boston Marathon Memorial in Copley Square.
9. In 2016, the women’s winner gave Gibb her trophy
On the 50th anniversary of Gibb’s first run, Atsede Baysa of Ethiopia won the women’s race at Boston. In a quiet act of tribute, Baysa gave her trophy to Gibb. The following year, Gibb returned it to Baysa. It is one of the more graceful exchanges in the sport’s history, and almost nobody outside of Boston knows it happened.
10. She sculpted the statue of herself at the Hopkinton start line — the first statue of a woman on the Boston Marathon course
At the start of this year’s Boston Marathon, a life-size bronze statue watched over the field at the corner of Hayden Rowe Street and Main Street in Hopkinton. It depicts Bobbi Gibb at age 23, mid-stride, making history on April 19, 1966. It is the first statue of a woman anywhere along the Boston Marathon course. And it was sculpted by Gibb herself. She is both the subject and the artist.
Gibb was commissioned to sculpt the statue as a tribute to all the women runners and pioneers of the Boston Marathon, and she describes it as a symbol of human and civil rights for everybody in the world. The project was championed by Joan Benoit Samuelson, who insisted that Gibb be the subject of the statue, and other Boston Marathon winners; was coordinated by the 26.2 Foundation; and was supported by over 400 individuals and organizations.
All image credits: Leif and Bobbi Gibb
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