More Quotes by Kathrine Switzer
When I finished the Boston race in 1967, there were two things I wanted to do. I wanted to become a better athlete because my first marathon was 4:20. In those days, that was considered a jogging time and I knew people were going to tease me. But I was more fascinated with what women could do if they only had the chance.
A picture, of Jock Semple kissed me,appeared in The New York Times the next day after Boston Marathon in 1973, and the caption was "The end of an era.
All you need is the courage to believe in yourself and put one foot in front of the other.
I always say that talent and capability is everywhere, all it needs is opportunity.
Five years after Boston 1967, I went to the Munich Olympics. I realized that major sponsorship could help me create the opportunity. I wrote a big proposal to Avon cosmetics on how creating a global series of women's races could lead to getting women in the Olympic marathon. People thought I was smoking poppy at the time. The longest event in the Olympic Games was 800m.
At the finish line of the 1967 Boston Marathon, one crabby journalist said it was just a one-off deal and women weren't going to run. Only a 20-year-old who had just run a marathon and was shot full of endorphin would say this but I said that there's going to come a day in our lives when women's running is as popular and as men's.
When I go to the Boston Marathon now, I have wet shoulders—women fall into my arms crying. They're weeping for joy because running has changed their lives. They feel they can do anything.
Women were afraid and they would never even imagine running a marathon in 1967.
When I forgave Jock Semple on Heartbreak Hill, I also got really cross with women. I couldn't understand why they didn't get it, why they didn't know that running was so cool and why they weren't in the race as well. Then I thought to myself "How stupid can you be? You've had so much encouragement and motivation and these women haven't."
Life is for participating, not for spectating.
