Katie Holmes on Women's Running

Sport in History

This episode features a paper given by Katie Holmes at the IHR on women's running.Until October 1975, women in the UK did not compete in marathons, nor were they allowed run in any other long-distance road races. Women’s Amateur Athletic Association rules prohibited them from racing further than 6000m. Road racing was an almost entirely male preserve.In May 1964, Scottish runner Dale Greig competed in the Isle of Wight Marathon, a lone woman in a field of 67 men, with the permission of the race organisers. Her run was covered by the national press but did not act as a catalyst for change. By the early 1970s, more women were challenging the athletics governing bodies’ rules and seeking to take their place on the start line at road races. These women saw themselves as long-distance runners and through their activism they asserted that identity for themselves and asserted the right of all women to run.In this paper, I will give examples of the varied ways in which women broke the rules. I will consider the wider meaning and impact of their activism in the context of changes in women’s sport and the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s.My paper draws on oral history interviews, contemporary coverage of the issue in Athletics Weekly and the press and archival research. Katie Holmes is a runner and independent sports historian from Nottingham. Her research into the history of women’s distance running in the UK is driven by a desire to capture stories which might otherwise be lost and to recover, and uncover, stories which have faded out of the collective memory due to the marginalisation of women in sport. In 2020, she was awarded an Independent Researcher Fellowship by the Women’s History Network for her research into Dale Greig. In 2022 she was awarded the British Society of Sports History Sporting Inequalities prize. She is a trustee of the British Society of Sports History.

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