Nina Kuscsik, a trailblazer in women’s distance running and the first woman to be officially recognized as a Boston Marathon champion, died Sunday at her home in Huntington, N.Y., after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 86.
A lifelong athlete and advocate, Kuscsik helped push the boundaries of what women were allowed to do in endurance sports at a time when simply entering a marathon could mean breaking the rules.
In 1972, she ran 3:10:26 to win the Boston Marathon, the first year women were officially allowed to enter with bib numbers. That same year, she also won the New York City Marathon in 3:08:41, and returned to defend her title in 1973.
Kuscsik’s impact went well beyond the stopwatch. In the early 1970s, she was part of a small but determined group of women who pressured the U.S. Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to lift its restrictions on how far women could race.
At the time, the AAU limited women to events no longer than 1.5 miles. Kuscsik, along with others including Kathrine Switzer and Sara Mae Berman, fought to overturn those rules. Their efforts helped pave the way for the official inclusion of women in marathons, and by 1984, the women’s marathon was added to the Olympic program.
Long before she became a marathon champion, Kuscsik was already challenging norms. In 1957, at just 18, she successfully petitioned New York State to allow women under 21 to receive nursing licenses.
She was a speed skating and cycling champion in New York before taking up running in the 1960s, more out of necessity than ambition. Her bike broke, and she needed a new way to stay in shape.
That decision led to a quiet but steady campaign for equality in sport.
Kuscsik was the only woman to start the inaugural New York City Marathon in 1970, though she didn’t finish that year due to illness. In 1971, she became the second American woman to break the three-hour barrier in a marathon, running 2:56:04 in Pennsylvania just behind Beth Bonner’s 2:55:22.
Over the years, her accomplishments were gradually recognized. In 1996, the Boston Athletic Association retroactively named the women who ran Boston unofficially between 1966 and 1971 as champions. In 2022, the New York Road Runners honored her with the Abebe Bikila Award, recognizing her decades-long contributions to distance running and women’s rights.
Kuscsik’s name doesn’t always come up first in conversations about the pioneers of women’s running. But without her steady advocacy, her races, her quiet persistence, there’s a good chance that women wouldn’t have had the opportunity to line up at the start line when they did.
She leaves behind not just a record book full of times and titles, but a sport that’s more inclusive because she insisted it should be.
