3 Dec 2023 | Women's marathon history |
Stephen Lane’s book “Long Run to Glory” is timely. The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will mark the fortieth anniversary of the first women’s marathon at the Olympics. The race was held at the Los Angeles games on 5th August 1984, 88 years after the first men’s Olympic...
10 Dec 2022 | Women's marathon history |
The official programme for the inaugural London Marathon in 1981 described Leslie Watson as “the Queen of the Roads”. Her prolific racing led to her becoming the public face of the women’s marathon in the UK. Watson had run over 40 marathons in six years. She had...
2 Nov 2022 | Women's endurance running history, Women's marathon history |
In October I was invited onto the Runner’s World UK podcast to talk about “five women who changed running forever”. It’s a great topic for a sports historian, but also quite difficult to choose just five. As Runner’s World magazine is...
11 Apr 2022 | Women's marathon history |
The 1970s were an important decade in the history of women’s marathon running in the UK and internationally. For most of the twentieth century, women were prohibited from running long distance races and it was only in the 1970s that countries began to lift the...
21 May 2021 | Women's endurance running history, Women's marathon history |
March is Women’s History Month in the UK, USA and Australia. This year, I decided to mark Women’s History Month by sharing a story from women’s running history on social media each day. This turned out to be a much more time-consuming task than I had...
