Olympic Champion Joan Benoit Samuelson To Be Guest of Honor at Manchester Marathon - Registration Closed
By Skip Cleaver
Posted Thursday, 25 October, 2007
Joan Benoit Samuelson will be the guest of honor in Manchester, NH for marathon weekend. She will be attending the Marathon Expo on Saturday, November 3 and will be help in awarding prizes on Sunday, November 4, following both races. She may run the half marathon as a training run, but won’t decide until the day of the race. She will be mingling with runners and signing autographs both days.
Registration for the marathon and half marathon have exceeded expectations, and organizers had to close out registration when the limit of 1,500 was reached, nearly evenly split between the two races. There will be no additional registration at the expo or on race day.
Joan Benoit Samuelson is one of the all-time great distance runners in the world. Best known for her Olympic Gold Medal in the Women’s Marathon in 1984, the first women’s Olympic Marathon, she also set world records and many American records. She twice won the Boston Marathon, setting course records both times along with a world best in 1983. Tremendously personable, she remains one of the most popular and highly recognized distance athletes in the world.
Joan Benoit, born May 16, 1957, in Cape Elizabeth, Maine has always been and athlete. Early on, she chose skiing, as did many in her home state, given the lengthy winters and proximity to slopes. She had a bad fall while skiing in 1972, breaking her leg. As part of her rehabilitation she took up running. And she developed a passion, and she was also exceptionally good at it.
Benoit enrolled at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1975. As a senior at Bowdoin, Joan Benoit entered the Boston Marathon as a complete unknown. There were few women marathon runners in 1979, only seven years after Boston officially admitted women (1972, the year Title IX was passed). Despite starting well back in the pack, she picked off woman after woman and took the lead between miles 19 and 20. And she went on to set a Boston course record of 2:35:15 at age 21, wearing her Boston Red Sox baseball cap throughout. This victory came only five years after Benoit began running competitively.
In 1983 Benoit returned to Boston; this time she was a well known elite athlete and started in the front. That year she ran the marathon distance faster than any woman in history, setting a world best of 2:22:43 on one of the most difficult courses. (Her time would have won 12 of the last 13 Bostons—only two women have ever run it faster.)
Her Boston victory also qualified her for the 1984 US Olympic Trials.
Seventeen days before the trials she had arthroscopic knee surgery, and was not expected to compete. But she defied the odds and expectations and toed the starting line. Her goal was beyond simply finishing, beyond limping in as a top three qualifier; her goal was to win. She did, zipping to 2:31:04!
Once again Joan trained doggedly for the Olympic Marathon. Greta Waitz of Norway was favored, having never lost a marathon. Rosa Mota of Portugal was near the top of the marathon world, and world record holder Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway was favored to medal. Competitors and media expectations were that Joan Benoit could have had an outside shot, but not with her bad knee. Heat and smog in Los Angeles in August were expected to take their toll, and they certainly did.
But no one could stay with Joan Benoit at the Los Angeles Olympic Marathon. By mile three she was running alone, and she remained well in front throughout, entering the Coliseum a minute and a half ahead of Waitz (Silver) and two minutes up on Mota (Bronze). Joan Benoit was then, and will always be the first women’s Olympic Marathon Gold Medalist, record the third best time in the world at the time—2:24:52.
In 1985 she set an American marathon record, only a few seconds off the world record, with a run of 2:21:21 at Chicago. Her American record stood for 21 years, now second American all time (Deena Kastor ran 2:19:36 in London in 2006). Joan was 13th in the 1996 US Olympic Trials, despite injury problems, and she was ninth in the 2000 trials as a master.
She plans to run the Olympic Trials Marathon in 2008. Her goal is to run a sub-three hour marathon at age 51 on her “home course”, the Boston Olympic Marathon Trials set for April 20, 2008.
Her Gold Medal victory in Los Angeles was an inspiration to countless women who may never have run long distance without her example. She largely inspired a women’s running boom—especially in the marathon.
She founded the famous Beach to Beacon 10K, one of the largest races in New England (August 4, Freeport, Maine), she is a motivational speaker and participates in races throughout the country. The Samualsons reside in Freeport, Maine.
History Revisited
There has not been a full marathon in Manchester since the old New England Title Marathon of Manchester in the 1930’s. Like the Manchester City Marathon, the first one finished on Elm Street. For nearly a decade the old race was considered one of the premiere events in New England distance running. The Manchester Marathon was first run in 1931, and was run for a decade. It was variously known at the Manchester Marathon, the New England Title Marathon, and the Manchester AAU Championship Marathon.
The course was point to point, beginning in Boscowen, running through Concord, down Daniel Webster Highway, into Manchester to finish on Elm.
Many big names ran it, including Clarence DeMar (then teaching in Keene), Ellison "Tarzan" Brown, Johnny Kelley, Fred Brown, Paul de Bruyn, Jock Semple, Jimmy Hennigan, Les Pawson, and many more.
Tarzan Brown, DeMar, Johnny Kelley were Olympians and BAA Boston Marathon winners; Pawson, de Bruyn, and Hennigan also won at BAA Boston.
The old race was discontinued with the onset of World War II. Now the Manchester City Marathon is back.
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