Kathrine Switzer, a field hockey player at Lynchburg College in Virginia, noticed Gibb’s historic endeavor. Later that year, after Switzer had transferred to Syracuse University, she started working out with the men’s cross-country team. Arnie Briggs, a mailman at the school and a running devotee, took her under his wing, and soon Switzer was running upwards of 10 miles per training session, albeit at a slow pace.
Briggs was a veteran of many Boston Marathons, and he liked to regale Switzer with its lore. She was intrigued and, after working her way up to a run of 25-plus miles, persuaded Briggs that she was ready for the marathon. He agreed to accompany her, but insisted that as card-carrying members of the AAU, they had to enter the race properly. All that required was getting a medical certificate, paying the entry fee of $2, and filling out an application form. She did so using the non-gender specific name of “K.V. Switzer.”
She was most concerned about being discovered at the start, when longtime Boston Marathon race directors Will Cloney and Jock Semple ushered the runners into the starting area and checked off their bib numbers. But she was fortunate: perhaps because of the frigid conditions or perhaps because she was dressed in oversized sweat clothes, she passed undetected. Now she was part of the field. The plan was that the Syracuse foursome would run together. They started slowly at the gun, well back of the leaders.
In Ashland, at about the two-mile mark, the press and officials’ bus began making its way toward the frontrunners. As it passed the back of the pack, a reporter spotted Switzer, her dark hair swirling in the rain, and yelped to Semple, “Hey, Jock, you’ve got a broad on your hands today.”
Switzer said that what happened next was her nightmare. The bus halted, and out charged Cloney and Semple to defend the sanctity of their race. First Cloney, outfitted in a fedora and overcoat, physically tried to stop Switzer, but she avoided his clutches.
On Patriots’ Day 1967, “Mr. Boston Marathon” was a very angry man. Runner No. 261 had violated the sacred code of the institution that was his baby. She deserved to be punished – and if Cloney couldn’t do the job, then Jock Semple would. “This wasn’t just about me being a girl,” Switzer said. “Jock probably would have left me alone if I was just running along like Bobbi. It was the number that got him. I had made him look like a fool.”
Semple evaded Briggs and lunged at Switzer, grabbing at the cardboard bib pinned to her sweatshirt. “He was pulling at me and screaming, ‘Get the hell out of my race and give me that number,’” Switzer recalled. “Arnie was screaming at Jock, and then Tom smashed Jock out of the way.”
