Maggie Mertens

for more, check out my book 

BETTER FASTER FARTHER: HOW RUNNING CHANGED EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT WOMEN (Algonquin Books, June 18, 2024)

1896

First modern Olympic games, a woman runs the marathon  — the day after the men

1922

The First Women’s Olympic Games garners 20,000 spectators

1928

The myth that all the competitors in the 800-meter women’s Olympic race collapsed means women won’t run longer than 100 meters officially for decades

1948

The first two Black women medal at the Olympics, Mickey Patterson, a bronze in the 200-meter race, and Alice Coachman, a gold in the high jump

1954

Diane Leather runs the first women’s sub-5:00 mile, the same year that Roger Bannister breaks the 4:00 minute mile for the first time

1966

Bobbi Gibb becomes the first woman to run the Boston Marathon when she sneaks into the race

1981

The Marathon is finally voted into the Olympics for women for the ‘84 Games

1983

Mary Decker becomes the first to ever win a gold at World Championships in the 3,000-meter and the 1,500-meter race

1984

Joan Benoit Samuelson wins the first ever Olympic Gold medal in the Women’s Marathon in Los Angeles

1992

The medical term the Female Athlete Triad is coined thanks to physiologists and doctors finally beginning to pay attention to the specific needs of women athletes

2007

British runner Paula Radcliffe wins the New York City Marathon just nine months after her first daughter was born – the first marathon she’d run in two years

2012

At the London Olympics, Allyson Felix wins three gold medals in track and field, the first American woman to do so since Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988

2013

As a junior in high school, Mary Cain set a US Junior record in the 1,500m at 4:04.62

2019

Caster Semenya, who won gold medals at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics in the 800m lost her case against the track federation’s more restrictive new testosterone rules, banning her from competition

2019

Alysia Montaño, Allyson Felix, and Kara Goucher speak out against Nike’s lack of maternity protections for sponsored athletes

2019

Jasmin Paris wins 268-mile UK Ultra-Marathon, beating all men and shattering the previous record, while pumping for breastmilk along the way

2023

World Athletics, the international track federation, announces most restrictive testosterone rules ever, and bans transgender women runners from international competition

2023

Faith Kipyegon sets a new world record for the women’s mile race: 4:07.64 seconds