40 years ago, Joan Benoit won the 1984 US Olympic Marathon Trials 17 days after arthroscopic knee surgery

For my money, the greatest american distance runner ever.

1. Her times were ridiculously fast. Like insanely fast for her time. She is still #8 all time American and she ran that time before super shoes.

2. She won gold in the first ever olympic womens marathon. Won boston, chicago, new york.

3. She raced fast during a time period when many men honestly believed women would die from running. The sexism she faced is just unlike today. Kudos to her for running through all that.

4. She raced FAST into her 50's and won 2019 Boston AG in the 55-59 category. To me this part is underrated but she is the rare marathoner who raced to her potential and didn't break down her body. (PS. I've read her memoir and she never lost her period during her peak racing days. That means she's the rare elite womens distance runner that maintained a healthy body weight while going fast).

5. She did this all before current training methods. No GPS, no heart rate, no lactate, no super shoes, modern PT. She probably trained most of her career without a wrist watch!

6. She ran her best in an era when there just weren't womens running role models. She had no to to follow, she literally wrote the script for distance excellence. And that is so hard to to.

"The race is best known as Joan Benoit won it just 17 days after having arthroscopic knee surgery and she of course would go on to win Olympic gold later in the year"

(1) stop using the word as

Stop trying to make "as" happen. It’s not going to happen.

Fantastic points!

Still being ranked #8 all-time American 40 years later is simply amazing.

i'm not trying to make it happen, Rojo is

xcskier66,

Solid overview. The only additional trinket would be she trained at sea level. Portland, ME elevation is 62ft

Here is the crazy kicker - it will probably go down soon with super shoes, but her time for the gold medal run in 1984 is still the fastest women's marathon time by an American at the Olympics. She is the only American woman to have broken 2:25. Again, this "record" is likely doomed with the advent of the super shoes, but still pretty amazing. Its kind of her last record still standing. There are some factual errors in the post above - don't think she won New York. Boston 2x and Chicago once with the 2:21 PR.

Rojo is known as the world record holder in spelling and grammar mistakes in one sentence.
Is that the right use for as?

For someone who was an extreme prodigy as a prep, Schiro went on to have a decent pro career, I believe. I think she made the 88 or 92 marathon team and won some other major road races like Peachtree.

right, he's basically saying that "the race is best known because Joan benoit won it..." but he should have written was "The race is best known for Joan Benoit winning it..."

oh and there we go my own typo, but unlike rojo I have no way of correcting it

She really was just built perfectly for distance running. And when she won the Olympics she was the talk of the country for a while, or at least it seemed that way to me. Maybe in a tie with Carl Lewis at the time, but even so, everybody had seen her race and knew who she was. I had just started out in the working world and all my non-runner colleagues, who were generally disinterested in track, were suddenly talking about Joan -- "did you see that marathon," "she just killed them," "that was so cool," and so on and so on. When people learned I had been a runner they'd bring up Joan for a few years after her win. I don't think I experienced a female athlete being so fully on people's minds in that way again until Caitlin Clark just recently.

He can't help it. He tries to pretend that he's doing it on purpose, but he simply can't do better.

This. Joan's victory in the '84 games, and the way she did it, broke through the media walls outside of track and running and made her a name among the average folks. In many ways, it was like Shorter's victory in '84: I think that we have a real case that a large part of the fact that marathons these days are 50%+ female (in 1986 female representation was 16% I recall) was the groundswell started by Joan's 2+ hours of straight bad-assery on national television. She transcended the sport.

Even the men from that era called her the most focussed, toughest competitor that they had seen. She was hard core and super competitive and had the iron will to train as hard as she needed to to be the very best in the world.

In addition, I think that, with modern pacing and a few gels (let her keep her Terra TCs), she could have broken 2:20 in Chicago in 1985. She wanted to run Ingrid into the ground, and she did, but she also slowed in the second half. I'd have loved to have seen '85 Joanie run a negative split.

I have no idea why someone so terrible at writing is a writer for a living

OMG. I forgot about gels.

With modern in-race nutrition and hydration she probably could have lopped off a couple of minutes. Not even joking. I wonder what she ate during a marathon?

a couple of minutes! wow! truly remarkable!