Boston Marathon

Boston marathon

famous 26-mile race held annually for long-distance runners. [Am. Pop. Culture: Misc.]

See : Endurance

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Boston Marathon

Third Monday in April

The oldest footrace in the United States was first held on Patriots' Day, April 19, 1897. Organized by members of the Boston Athletic Association (BAA), the race involved only 15 runners. Nowadays the Boston Marathon draws anywhere from 7,000 to more than 9,000 official starters, who must meet established qualifying times. Several thousand additional runners participate on an unofficial basis. In 1972, it became the first marathon to officially admit women runners, and in 1975 a wheelchair division was created.
The 26.2-mile course begins exactly at noon in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, includes the infamous "Heartbreak Hill" (a section of Commonwealth Avenue in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, that marks the race's 21st mile), and ends near Copley Square in the Back Bay Area.
Well-known American winners of the Boston Marathon include the "old" John Kelley, who won twice and last completed the race in 1992 when he was 84; the "young" John J. Kelley (no relation), who was the first American victor in the post-World War II era; and "Tarzan" Brown, who in 1938 took a break at the nine-mile mark for a quick swim in Lake Cochichuate.
Among the women, Rosa Mota of Portugal was the first to win three official Boston Marathon titles. And few people will forget the infamous Rosie Ruiz in 1980, who many believed tried to defraud the BAA by showing up at the end of the race to capture the women's laurel wreath, the traditional symbol of victory, without having actually run the full distance; this was substantiated by television coverage of certain checkpoints. Jackie Gareau of Canada was later declared the women's winner, although Ruiz continued to insist that she'd run the race fairly.
By 1988 the Boston Marathon became the Olympic Marathon trial for nine African countries, leading to what organizers call "the African running revolution." In 1988, a Kenyan runner, Ibrahim Hussein, won the Marathon, becoming the first African to do so. Since then, from 1988 to 2008, all but one winner in the men's division hailed from Africa. That impressive run included two Ethiopians, with all the rest of the winners coming from Kenya.

CONTACTS:
Boston Athletic Association
40 Trinity Pl., 4th Fl.
Boston, MA 02116
617-236-1652; fax: 617-236-4505
www.bostonmarathon.org

SOURCES:
AnnivHol-2000, p. 73
HolSymbols-2009, p. 92

Celebration days: Apr 18, 2011; Apr 16, 2012; Apr 15, 2013; Apr 21, 2014; Apr 20, 2015