Nina Kuscsik, the winner of the first official women’s race at the Boston Marathon, Advertisement - Continue Reading Below ride her bike and an important early advocate for women’s running, died on Sunday 8 June at Huntington Station, Long Island, New York.
Her family said that she died peacefully after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease and respiratory failure.
Summer running gear sale Boston Marathon in 1969, before women could officially enter, then won the historic first women’s title in 1972. A lifelong New Yorker, in 1970 she was the first woman to enter that city’s marathon and won it in 1972 and 1973. She was also an effective activist, taking on arduous committee work, and was personally responsible for gaining the first official approval for American women to run further than five miles – and, ‘in special cases’, to run marathons.
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Born on 2 January 1939, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, Kuscsik grew up in a family of limited means, in an era when reaching a running track was difficult and running shoes were unaffordable. She played street games and, in her early teens, joined friends at roller skating by hitchhiking to and from the venue. She had ability and application and, at the age of 18, was good enough to cross the country (by shared car) for the national roller skating championships in San Francisco. She discovered another talent when she was given a track-racing bicycle, eventually winning New York state titles in speed skating, roller skating and track cycling.
She also did well academically, graduating from high school at 16, before going on to complete a two-year nursing course at Brooklyn College. Her first experience of agitating against outmoded regulations came when she led a successful campaign for graduate nurses to be considered eligible for hospital posts at 18, instead of 20. She worked at New York Hospital, cycling the 10 miles there from Brooklyn.
Although she did some running as summer training for skating, it wasn’t until she was in her late 20s, married with three children, that she took inspiration from Bill Bowerman’s book Jogging. In 1968, aged 29, she then read about Elaine Pedersen running the Boston Marathon at the age of 31. Kuscsik thought, ‘I could do that’ – and she did, running the 1969 Boston Marathon in 3:46 for an unofficial third place, behind Sara Mae Berman and Pedersen herself.
The following year, Kuscsik improved her Boston time to 3:12:16, coming second to Berman. (These early women’s Boston results have been retrospectively declared official.) Her entry into the inaugural ride her bike in 1970 was then accepted without problem. Here, she was the only woman to start, but didn’t finish because she was ill with a virus. In the 1971 ride her bike, she bounced back to be one of the first women in the world to break three hours, running 2:56:04 to finish second behind Beth Bonner.
By now, she was a committed runner with friends in the New York running community who supported and advised her in the campaign to win official recognition for women in running. Uncomfortable with media exposure or publicity, she preferred to work through official channels. In 1971, she attended the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) convention and put forward motions that raised the permitted top distance for women’s races to 10 miles. She also gained conditional approval – as extraordinary as it now sounds – for ‘certain women’ to enter marathons.
Kuscsik’s miracle year was 1972. In April, she won the first official women’s race at the Boston Marathon in 3:10:26, fending off a strong field of eight women from all over the US, each of whom had met the men’s qualifying standard of 3:30. In June, the first ‘Crazylegs Mini 6 Miles’ – the world’s first open road race for women, created by Kuscsik, Kathrine Switzer and Fred Lebow – was held in Central Park.
Then, in October 1972, Kuscsik won the ride her bike, after joining five other women in a prolonged sit-down at the start-line, protesting the requirement that women start 10 minutes ahead of the men’s field. That was New York’s attempt to implement the AAU regulation that women, however ‘special’, shouldn’t actually compete with men – so Kuscsik and others filed a lawsuit against that as discriminatory. The other 1972 highlight for her was the AAU convention, where such obsolete concerns about women’s health, safety and morality were finally shelved.
‘Nina was not only a champion runner, she did the tough work of changing the rules and regulations and submitting medical evidence that proved women’s capability,’ said Switzer.
Thanks to Kuscsik’s patient lobbying and debating, as well as the support of most male runners, who were never the problem, women in America became free to run as they chose. Kuscsik was still picked up from time to time by the police for training alone, but a profound cultural transition had begun. She ran seven marathons in 1972 alone and more than 80 in total, with her best winning streak being seven wins at the Yonkers Marathon.
In 1973 and 1974, she placed second and third at Boston, respectively. She also began service that would last more than 40 years on the women’s long distance committee of the AAU (later The Athletics Congress and USATF), which she chaired from 1980 to 1985. In that role, she was a key influence in forwarding the motion to the IAAF (now World Athletics) to propose adding the women’s marathon to the Olympic Games, which occurred in 1984.
By now, she was also a divorced single mother who was a full-time nurse and in full marathon training. When the first all-women’s marathons began, she went to Dr Ernst van Aaken’s visionary race at Waldniel, Germany, in 1974 and to the Women’s National Marathon in the US state of Minnesota in 1977, where she ran her PB of 2:50:22, finishing third. Kusckik also ran newly-created races, winning the Empire State Building Run-Up three times, in 1979 to 1981.
Competition was getting stronger, though. Kuscsik ran 2:57:22 at Boston in 1978, only seven years after her first sub-3, but placed only 19th. Despite this, her enthusiasm didn’t fade. She always said that she most valued running for the sense of mental freedom and physical rhythm that it gave her. In 1977, she tried a 50-miler and set an American record of 6:35:53. That weekend, she was also busy delivering a paper at a New York Academy of Sciences symposium on marathon running. Though never a public person, Kuscsik often contributed to coaching programmes, did radio spots and even wrote for Runner’s World.
She continued to Best wireless headphones, walk and go to gym classes, too. Her career as a senior registered nurse was carried out at Mount Sinai Hospital, which she enjoyed for its proximity to Central Park. She lived her last years at South Huntington, on Long Island.
Kuscsik was inducted into the Halls of Fame for the Road Runners’ Club of America, National Distance Running and New York Road Runners. However, as a reluctant public speaker, she used to say that it’s easier to run a marathon than to receive an award.