Six Women, One Starting Line, and a Moment That Changed Running Forever

On the first Sunday morning in October 1972, Central Park was bathed in early fall sunshine, the crisp 50-degree air giving the changing leaves on the sugar maples and Sawtooth oaks near Tavern on the Green a bit of a sheen as the third New York City Marathon was scheduled to go off.

Only 278 runners had signed up; they paid just R16…

It doesn’t feel right using an uppercase M with this marathon. At the time, the race was decidedly small-scale. Only 278 runners had signed up (2026 saw 60 000 runners take part on 1 November); they paid just R16 to get in (instead of today’s R4 000), and the entire 42.2km race took place within the confines of the park, whereas today’s marathon stretches over five boroughs and requires the space of Central Park just to stage the start.

And Fred Lebow, who would ultimately become the impresario of the world’s largest race, had yet to make a name for himself beyond the city’s small and chummy running fraternity.

But perhaps suggestive of his P.T. Barnum–like skills, Lebow had persuaded The New York Times and a few other dailies to come to the park that day. News, Lebow promised, would happen. So the Times sent one of its reporters, Gerald Eskenazi, to cover the race, and Patrick Burns, a Times photographer for nearly 50 years, to shoot it.

And, as promised, something happened, without a single running step being taken.

Shortly before 11am, the six women entered in the race – yes, just six – lined up at the start. Lebow and his fellow organisers had openly courted women when the first New York City Marathon was held in 1970, even going so far as to ignore rules put in place by the Amateur Athletic Union that barred women from marathon race courses. For years, the AAU, the then-governing body of track and field and distance running and which sanctioned events such as marathons, had been intent on smothering a bubbling interest among women who wanted to run longer and race farther. It did so by disseminating unfounded “scientific” research (for instance, that women who ran more than a few miles risked infertility) and invoking confounding rules to keep women on the sidelines.

But soon after the second New York City Marathon, in the fall of 1971, the AAU relented, somewhat, on its stance: It ruled that “certain women” could take part in marathons, provided they either start their race 10 minutes before or after the men or on a different starting line. The rulings, imposed so women would run a “separate but equal” race from the men, were viewed by many runners of the day, female and male alike, as just the latest act of discrimination enacted by the AAU.

Five of the six women on the Central Park starting line came from either Manhattan or Long Island. Their running résumés varied to the extreme: One woman had won the Boston Marathon five months earlier; another rarely ran at all. The five were in their late 20s and early 30s, friends or acquaintances who typically met in the park for training runs or to pass the time while their husbands or boyfriends raced. The sixth runner was a 17-year-old from the Jersey Shore who had just started college the month before and had little connection to the other five women.

They stepped to the line, near 64th Street and Central Park Drive, and faced south toward Columbus Circle. The 272 men slated to run that day crowded around, waiting for the women to get their 10-minute head start. The women, spread across the line side by side, glanced at each other and over to Lebow, standing near the starter.

The gun went off. And the women sat down.

It was a perfect day for a run, and no one was running.

As Eskenazi reported in the next day’s Times, the six women just sat there “in the lotus position.” They then held up signs mocking the AAU and its discriminatory practices, everyone, that is, but the young runner from the Jersey Shore.

Patrick Burns clicked his camera, taking the photo that would run across four columns of Monday’s Times, be picked up by other newspapers around the nation, and make the AAU officials go ballistic when they saw it.

Story Update: November 3, 2016

*The running world has come a long way from the gender inequity experienced by Nina Kuscsik and her co-conspirators. “What these women did has had a lasting effect, even though very few people today, I think, knew about them,” says writer Charles Butler. “That’s why it was so fun to tell their story.” Their story became yet another chapter in the biggest trend in running: the growth in women’s running. Last year, more than 20 000 women finished the New York City Marathon, and, nationwide, women made up 44 percent of marathon finishers – the highest proportion ever, according to Running USA. *

In the half marathon, they made up 61 percent of finishers. Indeed, 57 percent of the 9.7 million total US road race finishers last year were women. Nina Kuscsik couldn’t be happier. “Seeing how many women are running marathons today, it just makes you realize you can change things,” says Kuscsik, 77, who crams Zumba, cycling, walking, and the occasional hill run into her weeks. “It’s really important that we’ve finally come to the idea that your body was meant to be used. And the freedom of the run, it’s just wonderful.” —Nick Weldon

This article first appeared on the Runner’s World USA website.

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