It makes sense, then, that films about running have tended to be about overcoming discrimination. In one interview Switzer expresses her bafflement at this idea because to her running had always seemed graceful enough.Īs Free to Run shows, running is not only eye-catching but also a sport that involves a battle of the will. Instead women were encouraged to pursue other, more graceful sports gymnastics, say, or figure skating. Such were the lengths some went to to preserve the maleness of marathon running. The line from running associations and medical professionals at the time was that women couldn’t cope with running – they were supposedly carrying too much fat, were too emotional and there were even concerns, as one nurse explains with retrospective astonishment, that their uteruses might fall out in the process. At the Boston Marathon in 1967, jogging enthusiast Kathrine Switzer had attempted to run incognito by signing up as K Switzer, but halfway around the course an event organiser was snapped trying to drag her out of the race, teeth bared and arms outstretched.
Amazingly, it wasn’t until 1984 that the women’s marathon was made an Olympic sport.ĭirected by Pierre Morath, Free to Run charts the uphill struggle women runners channelling the spirit of Emily Pankhurst faced in winning the right to compete.
Yet you may not be aware that at the same time women weren’t even allowed to compete in long distance running competitions, as detailed in a new documentary Free to Run. To think about sports and social justice is, above all, to think of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the American sprinting duo who gave the Black Power salute on the podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
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