Joan Benoit wins the inaugural Olympic women's marathon title at the 1984 Los Angeles Games (© Getty Images)
On Sunday (11), the world’s best women’s marathon runners will race for Olympic glory in the final athletics event of the Paris 2024 Games.
It was 40 years ago, at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, that Joan Benoit became the inaugural women’s Olympic marathon champion.
But the day that Benoit’s golden Olympic dream came true started with the jolt of a troubling nightmare for the ground-breaking US marathoner.
On 5 August 1984, the diminutive college coach from Maine earned herself a gilded niche in the annals of athletics posterity as the decisive winner of the first Olympic marathon for women – an unlikely-looking heroine on home ground in Los Angeles, with a white painter’s cap plonked in reverse on top of her short black hair.
In the early hours before the 8am start at Santa Monica College, after struggling to sleep and replaying the Chariots of Fire theme on her Walkman, Benoit eventually drifted off into the fretful fantasy of being lost in a department store while the big race began without her.
She dreamed of crashing through racks of clothing, rushing up and down escalators and hearing the gun go off before finally escaping and running wildly in an attempt to catch up with the leaders.
When she woke up to the reality of a foggy, already warming LA morning, Benoit made sure she would not be playing catch up in the race for a treasured place in the history of women’s distance running.
No dodo
The 27-year-old took her place on the start line, in her grey USA uniform, as the fastest ever woman over 26 miles 385 yards, having clocked 2:22:43 in the previous year’s Boston Marathon.
Alongside Benoit was the previous holder of the world best time, the Norwegian Grete Waitz, winner of the women’s marathon at the inaugural World Athletics Championships in Helsinki.
The 50-strong field also included Ingrid Kristiansen, Waitz’s emerging compatriot, fresh from becoming the first woman to break 15 minutes for 5000m with 14:58.89, and Rosa Mota, the Portuguese winner of the European marathon title in the heat of Athens in 1982.
Grete Waitz, Joan Benoit and Rosa Mota receive their marathon medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (© Getty Images)
While her rivals held back, wary of the heat and the notorious LA smog, Benoit shifted into 5:40-mile mode in mile three, swiftly opening up a 20-metre lead.
She fleetingly hesitated when she looked over her shoulder and saw the gap.
“I thought: ‘This is the Olympic marathon and you’re going to look like a dodo leading for halfway and then having everyone pass you’,” she reflected later.
“But I wasn’t running that fast and I was under control. I just wanted to run my own race, so I did what felt natural and didn’t have any second thoughts about it after that.”
Upping the pace to 5:20 miles, after passing the first 10km in 35:24, Benoit covered the second 10km segment in 33:08. Mota was 1:12 behind, the Norwegians a further 60 metres adrift.
Fitness concerns
Up in the ABC TV commentary box, Marty Liquori and Bill Rodgers were expressing concern about her early strike – justifiably so, perhaps, given Benoit’s troubled build up.
On a 20-mile training run in March, she felt a pop in her right knee “as if a spring were unravelling a joint.” After struggling to maintain fitness on an exercise bike, she underwent arthroscopic surgery to remove a fibrous mass called a plica.
Just 10 days after that, remarkably, Benoit won the US trial race in 2:31:04. She had accumulated a hamstring injury in her left leg by then and was still nursing that lingering problem, plus concern about her right knee, as she racked up 120 miles a week in preparation for the Olympic marathon.
As it happened, the stamina forged by the increasingly rapid weekly 20-mile runs she undertook in Maine’s unusually hot and humid June and July stood Benoit – and her healing body – in golden stead.
By the time Waitz tried to reel her in, it was too late.
Waving her cap in celebration as the 77,000 crowd roared her home in the Los Angeles Coliseum, Benoit crossed the line in 2:24:52 – with Waitz 1:26 behind in second place and Mota claiming bronze ahead of Kristiansen.
“I was so charged up when I broke the tape, I could have turned around and run another 26 miles – though maybe not in 2:24, almost a minute and a half ahead of Grete Waitz,” the euphoric Benoit proclaimed in the immediate aftermath.
Breaking down sporting barriers for women
Given time for reflection, the first Olympic golden girl of the women’s marathon could appreciate the significance of her achievement.
Progression of women's events at the Olympic Games
| Milestone | Year | Champion |
| Women’s events included on the athletics programme at the Olympic Games | 1928 | Betty Robinson (USA) - 100m Lina Radke (GER) - 800m 4x100m - Canada Ethel Catherwood (CAN) - high jump Halina Konopacka (POL) - discus |
| Women’s 200m, long jump and shot put added | 1948 | Fanny Blankers-Koen (NED) - 200m Olga Gyarmati (HUN) - long jump Micheline Ostermeyer (FRA) - shot put |
| Women’s 800m reintroduced | 1960 | Lyudmila Shevtsova (URS) |
| Women’s 400m and pentathlon added | 1964 | Betty Cuthbert (AUS) - 400m Irina Press (URS) - pentathlon |
| Women’s 1500m and 4x400m added | 1972 | Lyudmila Bragina (URS) - 1500m East Germany - 4x400m |
| Women’s 3000m, marathon and 400m hurdles added | 1984 | Maricica Puica (ROU) - 3000m Joan Benoit (USA) - marathon Nawal El Moutawakel (MAR) - 400m hurdles |
| Women’s 10,000m added | 1988 | Olga Bondarenko (URS) |
| Women’s triple jump added and women’s 3000m replaced with 5000m | 1996 | Inessa Kravets (UKR) - triple jump Wang Junxia (CHN) - 5000m |
| Women’s pole vault and hammer added, 20km race walk replaces 10km | 2000 | Stacy Dragila (USA) - pole vault Kamila Skolimowska (POL) - hammer Wang Liping (CHN) - race walk |
| Women’s 3000m steeplechase added | 2008 | Gulnara Samitova-Galkina (RUS) |
Back in 1896, a Greek woman by the name of Melpomene was barred from running with the men in the inaugural Olympic marathon.
She ran the course anyway, alone, starting well behind Spiridon Louis and the rest of the men. She completed the course in around 4:30, finishing with a lap around the outside of the ancient marble Panathenaic Stadium.
Prior to those 1984 Games in Los Angeles, which also featured a 3000m on the track, the Olympic limit for female distance runners stood at a mere 1500m.
“This win is a triumph for women’s athletics,” Benoit said. “We have proved that we can stand the conditions of the marathon.”
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
