Department News

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

ROBERTA "BOBBI" GIBB TO RECEIVE DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARD ON FRIDAY

MEDFORD -- Roberta "Bobbi" Gibb, who challenged and helped change prejudices against women running long distances by finishing the Boston Marathon in 1966,  received the 2009 Tufts University Athletics Department's Distinguished Achievement Award (DAA) on October 9. She was honored at Tufts Athletics' Annual Awards Ceremony at Cohen Auditorium.

The Record American newspaper in Boston announced Bobbi Gibb's Boston Marathon run as front-page news on April 20, 1966

The Distinguished Achievement Award was established to recognize extraordinary contributions to sports by individuals with Tufts and/or New England identities. Gibb joins an outstanding list of DAA recipients. Boston Celtics legend Red Auerbach was the first to receive the honor in 1987. New England Patriots and Revolution owner Robert Kraft, Olympic medalists Joan Benoit-Samuelson, Nancy Kerrigan and Ben Smith, and National Football League Hall of Famer John Hannah have also been honored.

Gibb is the 26th individual to receive the DAA. The Tufts Athletics' Annual Awards Ceremony also featured the presentation of the Athletics Department's Annual Awards to the top athletes of the 2008-09 year.

Gibb's deep passion for running was enhanced at Tufts, where she was enrolled at the School of Special Studies and took courses in sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts during the mid-1960s. Her father was a professor of chemistry at Tufts. Her interest in distance running blossomed after meeting a member of the men's cross country team. At the time, running long distances was considered hazardous to women and they had no organized opportunities to participate in the sport. However, Gibb was a uniquely talented runner and was encouraged to run in the Boston Marathon.

In 1966, her application to run Boston was denied because she was a woman. That inspired her even more. In "To Boston with Love," a poetic account of her lifelong love of running that was published in 1980, she wrote about the snub, "My outrage turned to humor as I thought about how many preconceived prejudices would crumble when I trotted right along for twenty-six miles."

Living and training in California at the time, Gibb rode a bus for four days and three nights to get to Boston. As an unregistered runner, she hid in a bush until the race began and then jumped into the moving mass of men. Many of the male runners nearby warmly welcomed her. They encouraged her to take off a hooded sweatshirt and reveal her gender. People along the route cheered when they recognized she was a woman. "My heart was beating double time as I began to realize the implications of what I was attempting," she later wrote.

After feeling strong through 20 miles, she finished the last six with each step sending "a searing jolt of pain to my brain." Afraid that failing to finish would prove the notion against women running marathons true, she "set each foot down as if on tacks" and crossed the finish line with a 3:21.40 time. That was faster than two-thirds of the men entered in the race. John Volpe, the Governor of Massachusetts, congratulated her with a hand shake at the finish line. Though she was excluded from the post-race dinner, she knew she had "opened the door to a world of possibilities."

Gibb ran the Boston Marathon again in 1967 and 1968, finishing as the first female - still unofficially. In 1972, six years after her first Boston Marathon, the U.S. Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) changed its rules and women were welcomed to officially register for marathons. That same year, Title IX - the legislation providing for equal treatment of boys and girls in school-sponsored sports programs - was passed.

By 1984, the women's marathon was added to the Olympic Games. Gibb, who became a professional sculptor, created the trophies presented to the top three finishers of the 1984 women's Olympic marathon trials. Her bronze work titled "The Marathoners" is on permanent display at the National Art Museum of Sport.

Born in Cambridge, Gibb earned a bachelor's of science degree from UCLA in 1969. She also has a degree from New England Law School. She has run the Boston Marathon six times total. The first time, as she recalls in "To Boston With Love," became a feminist statement.

"I knew nothing of the formal world of athletics," she wrote. "No doubt people of the time, both men and women, simply didn't know. Women in sports were not allowed to run more than one and a half miles. I believe that once people knew women could run marathon distances, the field would naturally open up."

Tufts is proud to honor one of its own for her role as a pioneer in sport.

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