Running Pioneer Katherine Switzer Speaks to SU Track and Field Teams
10/15/2003 4:02:05 PM | Cross Country, Track and Field
Switzer attended Syracuse in the mid-1960s when there were no women's athletics. She trained with coach Bob Grieve's men's cross country team, and caught the eye of Arnie Briggs, a mailman and runner who helped with SU's team. Briggs helped Switzer train for the Boston Marathon by going on long runs, sometimes running from Christian Brothers Academy to Cazenovia. Switzer became the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon after she signed her entry form K.V. Switzer, which didn't reveal her gender. Four miles into the race, a race official spotted her and tried to pull her off the course, but Tom Miller, an SU hammer thrower and Switzer's boyfriend at the time, tackled him in front of a press truck. Switzer finished the Boston Marathon, and went on to run more than 30 additional marathons.
Switzer's husband, Roger Robinson, a professor of English literature at a university in New Zealand, spoke to the student-athletes about the history of track and field. Robinson and Switzer are in Syracuse to deliver a lecture on campus, "The Message from Marathon: Great Moments in the Legends and Literature of Running," in Goldstein Alumni and Faculty Center at 5 p.m.
The current SU cross country team will compete at Albany on Saturday, Oct. 18.
