"Women are not physiologically capable of running a marathon."
Those eight written words resonated like a slap.
"How insolent," thought Roberta 'Bobi' Gib.
The letter she held in her hand represented a response to her official application for the Boston Marathon in 1966, which was directly rejected, but also a derogatory remark about her capabilities as a woman, especially at a time when she was running 65 kilometers a day.
Although the 1960s were very much in swing, the attitude towards female athletes and their participation in long-distance races was still outdated.
The question of whether women are able to run 42 kilometers already had an answer, which was highlighted countless times, but female runners were still banned from participating in practically all marathon races around the world.
"Let them go to hell," she thought, crumpled up the letter and threw it on the floor.
Bobbi Gibb will run the Boston Marathon regardless of whether she is allowed to participate.
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Try asking Google who the first woman to run the Boston Marathon was, and you'll come up with the name Katherine Switzer, as well as a photo showing a group of men pushing a woman with the number 261.
It's a shocking photo that easily fits into the narrative of ingrained misogyny, but it's not the story of the first woman to run the world's oldest marathon.
The real truth, as it usually happens, does not give such a black and white picture.
Growing up in the suburbs of Boston, Bobbi Gibb was always an energetic child who felt awe and love for nature.
"My mother used to tell me that I would never find a husband if I ran through the woods with the neighbors' dogs," says Gib.
Regardless of all the significant changes that took place during the 1960s, rigid social constructs still existed.
"After the war, people were just happy about the return to normality - and normal meant that the women were in the kitchen with nice curtains and washing the dishes. These were centuries-old reflexes of established beliefs about women," says Gibb.
"Just look at the life of my mother and her friends... They were such cramped lives, you couldn't even have a credit card without your husband's approval."
Gib knew she wanted something different, but that path - as with many who have idealistic dreams of big changes - led through numerous labyrinths.
"I wanted to change the social perception of women from earlier times, but I didn't know how to do it - at least not at the beginning."
Despite living in an area where the Boston Marathon route passed, Gib had never attended a race until her father took her to it in 1964.
The effect was immediate and fierce.
"I fell in love with running - it had a driving effect for me.
"All these people moved with great strength, courage, perseverance and authority.
"Something deep inside said I had to run this race - that I was made for it."
In the mid-1960s, women's long-distance running was still considered dangerous and radical.
By then, women had already run the 42-kilometer section many times, but there were still some unfounded ideas that the female body was not capable of withstanding such extreme efforts.
There were fears that allowing women to run long distances could lead to dangerous levels of indecency.
"Running was seen as a breeding ground for inappropriateness that would over-sexualize women," says Jamie Schultz, a professor of kinesiology at Penn State University.
The list of names of marathon pioneers that should be engraved is now almost lost.
Just one day after the men's marathon race at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, Stamata Reviti, a 30-year-old mother from Piraeus, unofficially ran the same course in five and a half hours.
Today, there is practically no relevant information about Revita, except that she was poor, that she had a 17-month-old child, and that she lost an older child the previous year.
Her feat did not attract any attention and only the newspaper Atinski glasnik (Athens Messenger) briefly reported that "one active and determined woman tried the trail in early March without stopping, with the exception of a short break during which she ate a couple of oranges".
Nothing else is known about this pioneer, who after that day was also remembered as "the first marathoner".
"Stamata Reviti has been lost in the dust of history," said the Greek author Athanasios Tarasoulas.
Thirty years later, Violet Percy unofficially ran the London Marathon in 1926 in three hours, 40 minutes and 22 seconds, and completed two more marathon races, in 1933 and 1936.
The Sunday Mirror quoted the marathon runner as saying that her 1936 race "proved that women could cover this distance".
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It was obvious to everyone that women could run 42 kilometers, although cynical remarks, based on imaginary evidence and lies, persisted.
At the 1928 Olympic Games, women competed in athletics for the first time, and on August 2, three athletes (out of a total of nine) broke the world record in the 800 meters.
Lina Radke from Germany won the gold.
Regardless, what was supposed to be a giant step in women's athletics turned into an extremely vile media campaign.
Newspapers around the world erroneously reported that a large number of women collapsed from exhaustion after the race and that such efforts were too great for the female sex.
The New York Times falsely reported that "six of the nine competitors were totally exhausted and falling to the ground at the end of the race," while the Montreal Star wrote that "the race was clearly too much for the women to handle" and that "things like this can only lead to injuries to female athletes".
The Daily Mail even considered the idea that any distance longer than 200 meters affects premature aging in women.
This kind of media storm led the officials to remove the 800 meters race from the program of the next Olympic Games and this discipline was not run again until 1960.
The perceived female fragility was supported by absurd medical theories, but which nevertheless found their way to the public collective consciousness.
"There was a fear that women would become excessively 'muscular' if they played sports, as well as the attitude that they have a limited amount of energy.
"If they continued to be involved in education, politics and sports, it could distract them from their reproductive abilities," Schulz said.
In 1964, Gib quietly began preparations for the Boston Marathon.
She often used the nature reserve in Middlesex for training, so as not to escape reproachful looks.
"I didn't know what to do. I had no coach, no books, nothing. I wasn't able to measure the distance I ran, so I let the time go. My boyfriend would drive me on his motorcycle, and I would run back home," said Gib.
When her parents took leave from work in Great Britain in 1964, they left 21-year-old Gib a small Volkswagen van.
She had the whole summer ahead of her and her long-standing dream of traveling around the country, so she packed up and slowly headed east for the west coast for the next 40 days.
"We would sleep under the open sky at night, and I would run in different areas every day.
"Across the Berkshires, along the Mississippi, across the Great Plains, across the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide and all the way to California - before jumping into the Pacific - all in just one summer.
"That was my training for the Boston Marathon in 1966," Gibb said.
A few months before the marathon, she applied and asked for a competition number, in order to become one of the 540 competitors who will start the race, but was rejected after the now famous assessment of women's physiological capabilities.
"I realized that this was my chance to change society's perception of women," said Gib.
"If I could prove these false beliefs about women wrong, I could address other false beliefs that have been used to deny female empowerment."
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Four days before the start of the race, she boarded a bus and returned home 72 hours later.
Mother drove to the start of the race that would catapult her into the spotlight.
"My father thought I was not normal and that's why he refused to come with us. I was wearing my brother's shorts, a bathing suit underneath and a big hooded sweatshirt that I pulled over my head," Gibb said.
After warming up for a few kilometers, she returned to the start of the race and tried to hide in the nearby bushes.
When the starting gun sounded, Gib joined the crowd, letting the faster runners separate before joining the mass of runners.
"The men running behind me soon realized I was a woman - probably by studying my figure from behind," Gibb says.
"I was very nervous. I didn't know what was going to happen. I even thought they might arrest me."
Her fears were unfounded - instead of hostility, camaraderie quickly emerged.
When it was clear that she had to take off her tracksuit because of the heat, she told the men surrounding her that she was afraid she would be kicked out of the race.
"We will not allow them to do that," was the common attitude of the runners.
"There was this myth that men were always against women, but that wasn't true. These guys were great, in good spirits. friendly and protective - it was as if my brothers were with me," Gib said.
Emboldened by such company, Gib shed her outer layer of clothing and ran free and proud - all with her blonde ponytail swaying to the rhythm of her steps.
Onlookers gathered in the streets - men, women and children - applauded as she passed them, and news of her participation spread through radio reports.
As she approached Wellesley College, the women's university on the race route, the crowd responded with an eruption of delight.
This moment was described 30 years later by the president of Wellesley College, Diana Chapman Welsh, who was in the audience that day as a student.
"Among the spectators who stood and greeted the contestants, word got out that there was a woman among them," she said.
"We watched the contestants' faces breathlessly waiting for her to appear, until the spectators along the track began to glimpse her arrival and then we all started cheering even harder.
"That day we all roared because we felt that this woman was doing something more than just breaking the gender barrier at a famous race."
Gib remembers the women "crying and jumping for joy".
"One kept shouting 'Hail Mary, Hail Mary'. It was an extremely emotional moment for me," Gib said.
Gib not only left behind stormy reactions, she quickly crossed the race.
For the first thirty kilometers, she ran at a pace that guaranteed a result under three hours, but her new men's sneakers began to give her blisters and her speed began to drop.
Trka se promenila.
The excitement at the possibility that race organizers might shut her down was now replaced by a feeling familiar to all long-distance runners - aching determination and longing for the finish line.
As she made her way through Boston, buoyed by the tremendous noise that followed, Gib still had no idea how far she was from the finish line.
"I didn't know where I was or how long I had left - I just gritted my teeth and kept running," says Gib.
As she turned right onto Hereford Street, the noise seemed to get louder, and with the final left turn onto Boylston Street, the finish line she had dreamed of for so long appeared.
Gibb finished her first Boston Marathon in an impressive three hours, 21 minutes and 40 seconds - faster than two-thirds of the other marathon runners.
Now, the photo in which she is running alone, her face scrunched up in anticipation of the finish line, is already iconic.
On both sides of the street you can see spectators squirming to get a better view of her, ignoring the other runners and desperately trying to catch a glimpse of the first woman to cross the finish line of this historic race.
When she crossed the finish line, she was warmly greeted by Massachusetts Governor John Volpi, who shook her hand and congratulated her, before ushering her into a hotel where reporters from around the world were eagerly awaiting her.
After a series of interviews, a group of men she was running with invited her to join them for the traditional post-marathon stew, but when they approached the front door, Gib was not allowed in: "Sorry, reserved for men only."
It was a day of dramatic change, but any thought of true equality was still a distant dream.
Gib tried the Boston Marathon two more times.
Ketrin Svicer, a runner who is often referred to as the first woman to run the race, joined her in 1967.
Gib then finished the race more than an hour before her.
The following year, five women participated in the Boston Marathon, and Gibb won again.
Katherine Switzer's participation in the 1967 race overshadowed Bobbi Gibb's achievement, but it is a fact that does not properly honor the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.
The famous Switzer photo has become a symbol of women's struggle for equality in sports, but this image and its context deserve a closer analysis.
It shows a group of men harassing Svicer.
It was actually just one man, one of the race directors, Jock Semple, who was trying to take off her number, not physically attack her, as the event was reported at the time.
"She obtained the number illegally, posing as a man on the race app. She sent a coach who was a man to collect the number," says Gib, who ran without a number and official registration for the race.
On the other hand, Switzer has always maintained that she never deliberately pretended to be anything other than a woman and that she habitually used her initials rather than her full name on race registration.
She also says that her coach raised the number because he was the leader of the group she was in and that it was not a premeditated ruse.
Gibb says he sympathizes with Semple, who he believes was motivated by the preservation of the race's status rather than outdated social norms.
"Jock was simply concerned that the race might lose its accreditation with the Amateur Athletic Union due to a woman competing in a men's race."
Still, it's no surprise that this photo of Katherine Switzer made headlines and caused outrage and controversy, despite Gib's once again warm reception.
"I stood openly at the start of the race in 1967. No one even tried to remove me, there were no problems. All the men were great - even Jock Semple," Gibb said.
But it was Katherine Switzer's story, and it fit into a narrative of antagonism and confrontation that was consistent with the aspirations of the 1960s, not what Gibb experienced.
In the decades that followed, this image was unfairly woven into the story of the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.
In any case, Bobby Gibb's position is unquestionable.
"Neither Switzerland was the first, nor was it official. She was, in fact, the second-place woman in the second year of what we now call the women's competition at the Boston Marathon," Gibb says.
Although it was not until 1972 that women would be officially allowed to participate in the race and receive numbers, the two of them lit that fuse.
"It changed the way people looked at female runners," says Gibb.
In 1973, a women's marathon race was held in Waldeniel, in West Germany, but as the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow also passed without a women's marathon, the patience of even the most persistent began to wear thin.
Especially since the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) in January 1980 presented the medical evidence concerning women long-distance runners:
"There is no clear scientific or medical evidence that long-distance running is contraindicated for healthy, trained female athletes.
"The ACSM recommends that women be allowed to compete nationally and internationally at the same distances as men."
The following year, at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee held in Baden-Baden, Germany, it was voted that a women's marathon would be included in the program at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Since then, it has been regularly held at the Olympic Games.
The effect this decision had on the women's marathon was dramatic.
In the last 60 years, the world record for women in the 42 kilometer race has been broken in an incredible hour and 23 minutes.
Compared to that result, men have improved their record by only 115 minutes in the last 54 years.
Gib continued to run every day, even though her life took a different direction.
She helped redefine attitudes towards women's running, but that was only one chapter in her varied life.
"After this, I wanted to go against everything and keep going," says Gib.
She graduated in philosophy and mathematics from the University of California in 1969, and also completed a preparatory course for medicine.
She also wanted to enroll in medical school, but, just like in Boston, it was difficult for women to find a place there.
On one occasion she was told that she was "too pretty" and that she would "distract the men in the lab".
Instead, she began working on epistemology and neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taking law classes in the evenings.
In 1976, she founded the Institute for the Study of Natural Systems, a non-profit educational and research group, and two years later she passed the bar exam.
She practiced law for 18 years, and then returned to scientific research, this time in the field of cellular molecular biology, with special attention to neurodegenerative diseases.
In addition to all that, she is also engaged in sculpture and contemporary painting, and she has written several books, among them a memoir called Wind in fire.
Her racing exploits continue to inspire.
In 1996, Gib was definitely recognized as an official, three-time winner - she received medals, and her name was engraved in the Boston Marathon Memorial Center on Copley Square.
Fifty years after that famous race, runner Acede Bajisa of Ethiopia presented Gib with the Boston Marathon winner's trophy for the 1966 race.
"They celebrate me every year as a triple winner, which is really fun, but the main thing is that I meet amazing people there from all parts of the world, all social groups, all ethnic groups, races, gender equality groups - we all love each other - we meet and become friends," says Gib.
A runner, a scientist, a lawyer and an author - Bobbi Gibb is all of these, and along the way she is also a promoter of positive developments in the field of equality.
"One of my intentions was to end this stupid war between the sexes where men have to live in one little box, while women have to live in another box," says Gib.
"I will always fight against fake messages. Only the truth sets us free.
"In the past, men were not allowed to have feelings, while women were not allowed to have brains.
"And what if a man wants to do knitting? Is he less of a man then? It's not. What if a woman wants to drive a truck? Are there fewer women then? It's not.
"All men can be whatever they want to be."
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