Word: marathoning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Partly because of new events inaugurated for women-the cycling road races, the marathon, even synchronized swimming-the Games had a strong feminine strain. They also had an unavoidable American flavor. Two of the world's three best teams were missing, after all. The first American gold-medal volleyball team was thoroughly unbothered by the asterisk. Nationalism was rampant but ugliness restrained. The boxing mobs were as sour as the judging: it is probably too soon to tell Evander Holyfield, a U.S. light heavyweight disqualified for not pulling his punches, that in the end this heartache...
...Olympics, where femininity is literally put to the test, the right to trudge 26-plus miles had been withheld from women until this year, when unsinkable Benoit, 27, of Maine and Andersen-Schiess, 39, of Switzerland came to opposite conclusions in the marathon. "I was extremely comfortable the entire way. It was a very smooth, happy, training-run atmosphere," said Benoit, whose 2-hr. 24-min. 52-sec. frolic was dramatic only in light of the arthroscopic knee surgery she underwent 17 days prior to winning...
...such a momentous event, history's fastest all-woman marathon began in a quaint setting at the compact track of Santa Monica City College, where the mood was suitable for a high school pep rally, and so few tickets were sold at just $4 a head that the gates eventually were thrown open to all. Being a 5-ft. 3-in. feather in the wind, Benoit found that just 50 jostling women caused a terrific congestion. She hurried into the clear under a delightful painter's hat with the bill brushed back. About three miles out, Benoit...
Norway's gaunt and great Grete Waitz finished second, 1 min. 26 sec. late, without encouraging any discussion of her chronically creaky back. It had been in severe spasm the day before. Benoit was "too strong," said Grete, who had never before lost a marathon that she finished. By the halfway point, according to her old Norwegian saying, "the train had already left." Waitz was one of the few runners who viewed the Swiss straggler with a totally unmixed emotion: "I would have taken her right off the track. I don't like to watch that." Benoit sighed...
Before anyone could read women's frailty into the issue, Benoit added, "Wait until you see some of the men Sunday," when the race would be later in the day, and the cloud cover figured to be less. Aside from Pheidippides, the gasping Greek who established the marathon distance in his farewell appearance as a messenger, the most famous Olympic swooner before Andersen-Schiess was, of course, a man: Dorando ("Wrong Way") Pietri, an Italian who mislaid the finish line in 1908 in London...