CAPE ELIZABETH — August 5, 1984.
It’s a day that will forever be etched in not only Maine running laurels, but this state’s prestigious athletic history.
It’s the day that Joan Benoit, a skinny, lanky runner from Cape Elizabeth who didn’t even take up the sport until her sophomore year of high school, joined 49 other competitors in making Olympic history by competing in the first marathon for women a quarter-century ago.
And 26.2 miles later, Benoit, a Cape Elizabeth High School and Bowdoin College graduate, strode into historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum wearing a gray Team USA singlet and a white painters hat, triumphantly raised her arms, smiled and crossed the finish line in 2 hours, 24 minutes, 52 seconds to become arguably the most recognizable athlete this state has ever seen.
Benoit, who would marry husband Scott Samuelson soon after that memorable race, still remembers that day like it was yesterday.
“It doesn’t seem like it’s been 25 years,” she said in a recent interview at Fort Williams Park, “…because I’m still out there, just as passionate about the sport as I was back then.”
But, as all stories do, this one has plenty of subplots, and the first chapter was written in March of 1984.
A near disaster
St. Patrick’s Day 1984 was a typical day for Benoit. She embarked on a 20-mile run on one of her favorite training loops through Cape Elizabeth and South Portland in preparation for the upcoming Olympic Trials, the first such race for women.
But due to a pain Benoit had never felt in her career, she almost didn’t even make it to the trials’ starting line, much less to Los Angeles.
Benoit had some right knee pain roughly 14 miles into her run, and had no choice but to stop. Despite six weeks of rest and recovery, arthroscopic surgery would be the only option.
She underwent the procedure in late April, a mere 17 days before she and more than 200 other women from around the country toed the line in Olympia, Wash., eager to earn one of the coveted three spots on the U.S. team.
Even though she was one of the prerace favorites going in, Benoit had already accomplished her first goal.
“I just wanted to be able to get to the starting line. It’s all about getting to the starting line,” she said. “I did a 17-mile training run that week and I said to myself, ‘If I can get through that, I’ll go to the starting line.’”
She went to the starting line adorned in a red and white singlet and, 26.2 miles later, had won the first Olympic marathon trials for women, covering the course in 2:31:04.
That was well off her then world-record time of 2:22:43, set in winning the 1983 Boston Marathon, but the humble Benoit would now represent her town, state and country in the City of Angels later that summer.
Ironically, Benoit took up running while rehabbing from a broken leg her sophomore year of high school, and she hasn’t looked back since.
After her victory in the trials, Benoit returned home to Maine to focus on, among other things, planning her wedding to Samuelson, which took place in September 1984, and for a little more rest and recovery.
Not surprisingly, she wound up doing the bulk of her Olympic preparation in her home state, as runners tend to train on terrain where they are most acclimated.
“People had given me a hard time about staying in Maine training for that event, but you need to train where you’re most comfortable,” Benoit said.
After the opening ceremonies in which Benoit marched into the historic Coliseum with hundreds of other athletes clad in red, white and blue, she headed up to Oregon to stay with friends until the big day approached.
History made
Sunday, Aug. 5, 1984, was a beautiful day for running by Southern California standards.
Partly to mostly cloudy skies and fairly low humidity awaited Benoit and the other 50 runners on an early morning as they headed to the starting line in Santa Monica for the 26.2-mile journey to the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Before the gun even went off, this had become a truly remarkable year for the women, as Mother Nature proved.
“We also lucked out. The men didn’t have as nice a day for their marathon a week later,” Benoit said.
Going into the race, Benoit knew all 50 runners, including herself, all had a shot at the gold, acknowledging her competition came from “everyone.”
But in reality, her main threats were Grete Waitz and Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway along with New Zealand’s Lorraine Moller and Portugal’s Rosa Mota.
When the gun finally sounded, Benoit started off rather conservatively, hanging near the back of the pack until the runners reached the first water stop three miles in.
But knowing there were tons of those along the way, many miles to run, and with many of her rivals going for water, Benoit decided to make her move with the pace far too tactical.
She never trailed again, widening her gap mile after mile on a flat course which wound through the Los Angeles metropolitan area, along the scenic Southern California coast and around the University of Southern California campus.
Benoit didn’t expect the cavernous Coliseum to be full.
“I didn’t really expect a huge crowd to be on hand because it was the first time the women’s marathon was being contested and it was a Sunday morning,” Benoit said.
But she would be in for a surprise.
When Benoit emerged from a dark tunnel onto the track in a stadium that has seen many historic moments — among them the first Super Bowl in 1967 — the sun was shining and every seat was filled.
Well, technically not, because a lot of those people were standing and applauding.
“I literally heard the crowd get to its feet before I entered the Coliseum, and I said, ‘Oh boy, there are people in there,’” Benoit said. “And then when I had my first view of the inside of the Coliseum, I saw that it was full.”
A short time later, Benoit crossed the finish line with a smile that could’ve stretched from Orange County to Aroostook County, raised her arms ever so triumphantly, just another example of the power of the dream.
“It was living a dream, I mean I think that all young people have dreams, whether it’s to be artists or musicians or dancers or athletes or writers or whatever,” Benoit said. “My dream was to make it to the Olympics. That’s sort of my message to young people now to live their dreams and follow their hearts.”
And that’s a message that still lives on today, and Benoit will commemorate the 25th anniversary of her accomplishment by running the New York City Marathon in November.
An impact 25 years in the making
Even though Joan Benoit Samuelson won two Boston Marathons (1979, 1983) before striking gold in Los Angeles in 1984, the last of those three races has perhaps not only had the biggest impact on women’s running in Maine, but around the country in general.
Fourteen years later, Samuelson founded the Beach to Beacon 10K road race in her hometown of Cape Elizabeth, which brings Maine’s top runners and the world’s elite athletes, along with thousands of recreational athletes, together in this coastal community.
To say the popularity of that race has grown in the 12 years since its beginning is an understatement.
A little more than 2,000 runners completed the inaugural 1998 race, and 6,000 toed the line in the 12th annual race here last weekend, more than 5,600 of them finishing.
They included two women who look up to Samuelson a great deal in training partners and friends Sheri Piers of Falmouth and Kristin Pierce-Barry of Scarborough, who have followed in Samuelson’s foot
steps in becoming arguably the top two female road racers in Maine.
Piers, the former Sheri McCarthy, was 13 years old in 1984.
“I was watching it on TV. I think my whole family was watching it,” said Piers. “I actually was doing a little bit of running at the time but nothing real competitive, just for fun.”
Piers wound up winning the Maine women’s championship Saturday in the race her idol founded while Pierce-Barry won it in 2008.
Pierce-Barry was only 10 in 1984, and she, like Piers, didn’t have visions of a competitive running career back then.
“I wasn’t going to run but my dad was. He did a lot of road racing and I had done a couple fun runs here and there, so it was in my family and we talked about it a lot,” she said.
But Pierce-Barry took up the sport in high school and went on to have a great career at South Portland High and Dartmouth College.
She and Piers have both competed in numerous Boston Marathons — Piers was the third American finisher there this spring — something that wouldn’t have been possible many years ago as women who tried to slip into the field would be yanked from the course.
“Women’s running, I feel like, has exploded,” said Pierce-Barry. “The episode you’re talking about in the Boston Marathon was only in 1967 or ’68. It wasn’t that long ago that women were getting ripped off the course.”
But Samuelson and those who came before her changed all that.
“We have training camps now in this country which have helped facilitate the athletes’ dreams and aspirations post-collegiately,” said Samuelson, referring to the fact that amateur athletes didn’t have a voice regarding how their sports were governed until the Amateur Sports Act was passed in the late 1970s.
Now, there are programs such as the Oregon Track Club, which two-time B2B winner Ben True is joining in September; Zap Fitness, started by the late Andy Palmer, a Madawaska native; and local clubs such as Bangor-based Sub 5, of which many local women are members.
“[Samuelson’s] brought light to both Maine and to women’s running. It’s pretty cool,” said True.
In more ways than one, particularly on the state’s high school running scene.
In the last 25 years, many Maine schoolgirl runners have gone on to compete at the college level, and the future looks even brighter.
Just look at the results of the New England Cross Country championships last fall, in which four Maine girls — all freshmen — finished in the top 10.
Samuelson’s competitive marathoning career came to an amazing end at, ironically, the 2008 Olympic Trials, in — where else? — Boston.
She ran an astonishing 2:49:08 at age 50 and finished amidst a throng of roaring spectators, just like in Los Angeles two decades ago.
Piers and Barry were in the field, and to get to compete in a former Olympic champion’s final competitive race — albeit one who grew up in both of their backyards — was downright amazing.
“That was huge always for me, and I think for Sheri, too. Just wow, someone who grew up down the street from us has done all these amazing things,” Barry said.
An impressive final chapter to close an inspiring book.
