The woman, the myth, the legend! Bobbi Gibb paved the way for female athletes by running the Boston Marathon!
On Nov. 2, 1942, a legend was born. Growing up in the Cambridge area of Massachusetts, Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb used her legs to get to school. Eight miles of running was her daily commute while wearing Red Cross nurse shoes. At the time, running shoes were only made for men.
Gibb studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as well as Tufts University School of Special Studies. She moved to San Diego, California, and married her husband. In 1965, Bobbi Gibb wrote to the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) for an entry in the 1996 Marathon. The response was a letter of regret from Will Cloney stating, “Women are not physiologically capable of running a marathon and we would not want to take on the medical liability. Furthermore, the Boston Marathon is a men’s division event. The rules of International Sports and the Amateur Athletic Union [AAU] do not allow women to run races more than the sanctioned one and a half miles.” In 1966, Gibb trekked to Boston, Massachusetts on a bus to run in the Boston Marathon regardless of the thoughts and opinions of anyone around her, even her family.
Bobbi Gibb was in the number of many men who were running, and rather than heckling her to leave, they cheered her on. As she ran, she passed by buses of men who stopped running and couldn’t finish the race. They cheered her on and she pushed through the blisters from her boy-sized running shoes. After passing the finish line, winning the presanctioned race group, the Governor of Massachusetts at the time, John Volpe, came down to shake her hand to congratulate her.
In 1967 and 1968, she returned to race in the unsanctioned group where she finished first. The AAU changed their rules in 1972, accepting the first official women’s field. Now, women represent about 45% of the marathon runners each year.
After her three infamous races, Bobbi Gibb earned her degree in mathematics, philosophy and law while working on epistemology and color vision at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is an artist, sculptor, author, marathon winner, scientist, mathematician and attorney. Roberta Gibb is an inspiration to us all!