Boston Marathon

The race commonly known as the Reddish Road Race in fact has had several names over its history, reflecting who put it on. The commonality is that it was run in Jamaica Plain, starting near Jackson Square and going through West Roxbury and Roslindale on its way back to the starting line. Between 1908 and 1913 it was sponsored by the Acme Athletic Association. In 1914 the William Reddish Club sponsored the race. For 1916 and 1917 the Jamaica Center AA sponsored the race. After a hiatus, the Michael J. O’Connell American Legion Post 76 sponsored the race until 1938. In 1939, William Reddish reappeared, with the Reddish AA sponsoring the race until 1948. During this time, the race distance was changed from 10 miles to 15, starting in 1947. William Reddish died 12 days after the 1948 race, which marked the end of the event.

Race Winners-

Beginning in 1909, the Cathedral Road Race, originally put on by the Cathedral Young Men’s Catholic Association, run through the South End and South Boston for a distance of 10 miles. In 1968, its running was delayed due to the disturbances that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is a photograph of Charlie Robbins crossing the finish line first in the 1950 Cathedral Road Race. He set a course record on the day, but due to handicapping, he ended up in 17th place. This is from the Leslie Jones Collection (click on photograph for more information.)

Race Winners-

Beginning in 1932, the Presentation Athletic Association put on a 10-mile road race that ran through Brighton and Newton. Most notably, part of the course was the Commonwealth Avenue section of the Boston Marathon. When the Presentation AA’s clubhouse burned down in 1943, that spelled the end of the race. In 1947, the Brighton Road Race began following the same route. That version appears to have lasted 3 years.

Race Winners-

The North Medford Running Club dates back to 1933, when the North Medford Road Race began. At 20 miles, at the the time it was the longest of the marathon prep races. The name and sponsorship of the race changed to the Dilboy VFW Post in 1950, and the last race was run in 1951.

Race Winners-

Beginning in 1949, Hyde Shoe put on a 12 mile race in Cambridge. In 1965, the sponsorship changed to the Marsh Post. This is a race we were not able to track to its conclusion, but it was still being run in 1978.

Race Winners-

Today, one must earn his or her way into the Boston Marathon with a qualifying time. The BAA’s website lists some of the top qualifying races, but there are others in the area that could be used to qualify for Boston. Some Massachusetts marathons include:

• Baystate Marathon, Lowell
• New England Green River Marathon, Greenfield
• Cape Cod Marathon, Falmouth
• Walter Childs Memorial Race of Champions Marathon, Holyoke
• Old Colony Marathon, Westfield
• Martha’s Vineyard Marathon, Oak Bluffs

A native of West Medford, Johnny Kelley competed in 108 marathons over the course of his career. He ran in a record 61 Boston Marathons and won in 1935 and 1945. In 1992 he completed his last full Boston Marathon at the age of 84, having become a much-beloved figure on marathon day every year. A statue depicting an elderly Kelley running with his younger self was erected in Newton in 1993.

Image Credit:
Johnny Kelley crosses the finish line, 1945
Copyright Leslie Jones.
Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

A member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island, Ellison “Tarzan” Brown won the Boston Marathon in 1936 and 1939. His victory in 1936 came after an intense duel with Johnny Kelley, and was said to break Kelley’s heart. The place where Brown passed Kelley for the final time in the Newton hills subsequently became known as Heartbreak Hill. Brown is only the second Native American to have won Boston and the only Native American to have won two.

Image Credit:
Tarzan Brown winning the 1939 Marathon
Copyright Leslie Jones.
Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Bobbi Gibb was the first woman to complete the entire Boston Marathon, a feat she first accomplished in 1966. Women were not officially allowed to compete in the marathon until 1972, because it was believed that they could not handle running long distances.  Gibb ran in the Boston Marathon unofficially in 1966, 67, and 68. In 1996 the BAA officially named her the women’s division winner for those years and awarded her a medal.

Image Credit:
Boston Marathon Memorial, Copley Square
April 2015

Sara Mae Berman was the top woman finisher of the marathon in 1969, 1970, and 1971, setting a new course record in 1970. She was honored along with Bobbi Gibb in a ceremony in 1996 and given a medal in recognition of her three victories. She and her husband Larry founded the Cambridge Sports Union in 1962, which has since become one of most prestigious athletic clubs in New England.

Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon with an official bib. In 1967, she registered for the marathon under the name K.V. Switzer and was accepted as an official entrant. She is the subject of a famous series of photographs where a race official attempted to remove her from the course before being thrown off by Switzer’s then-boyfriend. She would compete in the Boston Marathon again in 1975, finishing second in the women’s division.

Bill Rodgers has competed in the Boston Marathon 17 times, winning it four times including three years consecutively in 1978, 79, and 80. He has won 22 marathons overall and is the only runner to hold titles in the Boston, New York, and Fukuoka marathons simultaneously. He was ranked #1 in the world in the marathon by Track & Field News in 1975, 1977, and 1979.

Image Credit:
Boston Marathon Memorial, Copley Square
April 2015

Joan Benoit broke a 28-year-old record at the 1979 marathon, shaving eight minutes off the previous fastest marathon finish for a woman.  At the 1983 Boston Marathon she broke the record again, shaving two minutes off the marathon record that had been set only the day before at the London Marathon. She competed in four Boston Marathons overall winning twice. Often competing while wearing a Red Sox cap, she won the first Olympic Women’s Marathon at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984.

Image Credit:
Boston Marathon Memorial, Copley Square
April 2015

Among their many athletic endeavors Dick and Rick Hoyt participated in 72 marathons overall, including 32 Boston Marathons. Dick would push Rick, who has cerebral palsy, in a specialized wheelchair. They started competing in athletic events when Rick was 15 and Dick was 36, and competed in over 1,100 events together. A bronze statue commemorating Team Hoyt was dedicated in Hopkinton near the starting line in 2013.

Dick retired from marathon racing after completing the 2014 Boston Marathon. Hoyt family friend Bryan Lyons had been doing marathons with Rick since then. Lyons ran the 2019 Boston Marathon by himself, as Rick was unable to compete due to health issues. It was the first Boston Marathon he had missed in over 30 years. Lyons passed away suddenly in 2020; he was 50 years old.

Dick Hoyt passed away at age 80 on March 17, 2021.

In 1918, as a way of showing support for the men fighting overseas in World War One, the BAA cancelled the marathon and instead held a military relay race. Fourteen teams of ten men competed with each man running 2.5 miles. The team from Camp Devens was victorious, completing the marathon route in 2:24:53.

The 2018 marathon featured a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of this event as part of the BAA’s Year of Service, with eight pairs of runners representing all branches of the U.S. military and the eight cities and towns on the marathon route running 3 or 4 miles each. They finished in 3:55:13.

At the 1980 marathon, Rosie Ruiz was the apparent winner in the women’s division with a time of 2:31:56. After displaying behavior atypical of a female marathon finisher, and amid growing suspicions that she had previously cheated at the New York Marathon, a BAA investigation determined that Ruiz had not in fact won and she was stripped of the title. First place was then awarded to Jacqueline Gareau who had a time of 2:34:28, a new course record.

Cuban-born and Wayland- raised Alberto Salazar won the 1982 Boston Marathon in an exciting fashion, in what has become known as the “duel in the sun.” Salazar was neck and neck with Dick Beardsley for much of the race on an unseasonably warm April day. Salazar, who was unused to the weather and severely dehydrated, sprinted ahead in the final yards to win the race with a time of 2:08:52. He finished only one tenth of a second ahead of Beardsley. He had not drunk any water for the last eight miles and required several liters of IV fluids to recover.

In celebration of the 100^th running of the Boston Marathon the field was expanded to 38,708 official entrants.  35,868 finished the race, marking the largest field of finishers in the history of the race. Uta Pippig of Germany overcame severe dehydration and other physical ailments to become the first woman to officially win three consecutive Boston marathons.

At 2:49pm during the 2013 marathon on April 15, two bombs exploded near the finish line. Three spectators were killed: Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, and Martin Richard. Over one hundred others were injured including many that lost limbs or would later have limbs amputated. Three days later MIT police officer Sean Collier would be killed in a confrontation with the perpetrators of the attack, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Tamerlan would himself be killed during a shootout with police officers in Watertown in the early morning hours of April 19. An injured Dzhokhar would be apprehended later that day after an extensive manhunt put much of the Boston area in lockdown. He was found guilty of 30 charges related to the attack on April 8, 2015 and has been sentenced to death.

Boston Police Sgt. Dennis Simmonds, who suffered a head injury during the shootout in Watertown, died as a result of his injury on April 10, 2014.

In the spring of 2014, the BPL hosted an exhibit featuring items left at the temporary memorial to the victims of the bombings in Copley Square as well as messages of support sent from all over the world. The exhibit ran from April to May of 2014, and the items are now in storage at the Boston City Archives. See link below about the Our Marathon project for more information.

Image Credit:
Flowers and other objects left in tribute to victims of the bombings at the first bombing site in front of Marathon Sports.
April 24, 2013

The 2014 marathon had the second largest-field in race history with around 36,000 registered participants. Mebrahtom "Meb" Keflezighi finished the race in 2:08:37 and became the first American man to win the race since 1983, and at two weeks shy of his 39^th birthday was the oldest winner since the 1930s. A refugee from Eritrea, Meb immigrated to the U.S. with his family at age 12 and became a naturalized citizen.

Image Credit:
Boston Marathon Memorial, Copley Square
April 2015

In 2018 during cold, rainy, and windy weather conditions that forced many runners to drop out, Desi Linden became the first American woman to win the marathon since 1985. She had come in second seven years earlier after falling behind by two seconds during a sprint down Boylston Street against eventual winner Caroline Kilel.

The 2018 marathon is notable for being one of the slowest on record, thanks to the weather conditions. Linden’s finishing time of 2:39:54 was the slowest winning time for the women’s race since 1978.