Sports

Joan Benoit Samuelson's 1984 Olympic marathon win was a game-changer for women's sports

Published

1 year ago

December 26, 2024

Joan Benoit Samuelson's 1984 Olympic marathon win was a game-changer for women's sports

As Joan Benoit Samuelson negotiated the hairpin turn into the Coliseum tunnel, ran past the USC locker room and onto the stadium’s red synthetic track for the final 400 meters of the 1984 Olympic marathon, her focus wasn’t only on finishing, but on finishing strong.

Women never had been allowed to run farther than 1,500 meters in the Olympics because the Games’ all-male guardians long harbored antiquated views of femininity and what the female body could do. If Samuelson struggled to the line, or worse yet dropped to the ground after crossing it, that would validate those views and set back for years the fight for gender equality in the Olympics.

“They might have taken the Olympic marathon off the schedule,” Samuelson said by phone two days before Thanksgiving. “This is an elite athlete struggling to finish a marathon. It never happened, thank goodness. But that could have changed the course of history for women’s marathoning.”

Actually, that race did change the course of history because nothing remained the same after a joyous Samuelson, wearing a wide smile and waving her white cap to the sold-out crowd, crossed the finish line. This year marked the 40th anniversary of that victory, and when the Olympics return to Los Angeles in four years, the Games will be different in many ways because of it.

Joan Benoit celebrates on the top step of the podium after winning gold in the women’s marathon at the L.A. Olympic Games on Aug. 5, 1984.

(Lenny Ignelzi / Associated Press)

Since 1984, the number of Summer Olympic events for women has nearly tripled, to 151, while last summer’s Paris Games was the first to reach gender parity, with women accounting for half of the 10,500 athletes in France. Fittingly the women’s marathon was given a place of honor on the calendar there, run as the final event of the track and field competition and one of the last medal events of the Games.

None of that seemed likely — or even possible — before Samuelson’s win.

“I sort of use marathoning as a way to storytell,” Samuelson said from her home in Maine. “And I tell people LA 84 and the first women’s Olympic marathon was certainly the biggest win of my life.”

It was life-changing for many other women as well.

Until 1960, the longest Olympic track race for women was 200 meters. The 1,500 meters was added in 1972, yet it wasn’t until the L.A. Games that the leaders of the International Olympic Committee, who had long cited rampant myths and dubious sports-medicine studies about the dangers of exercise for women, approved the addition of two distance races, the 3,000 meters and marathon.

Which isn’t to say women had never run long distances in the Olympics. At the first modern Games in Athens in 1896, a Greek woman named Stamata Revithi, denied a place on the starting line on race day, ran the course alone a day later, finishing in 5 hours and 30 minutes, an accomplishment witnesses confirmed in writing.

Her performance was better than at least seven of the 17 male runners, who didn’t complete the race. But she was barred from entering Panathenaic Stadium and her achievement was never recognized.

Eighty-eight years passed before a woman was allowed to run the Olympic marathon.

“There are men that are raised with resentment for women, except for their own mothers. That’s just a part of their nature,” Hall of Fame track coach Bob Larsen said. “A lot of good things have happened in the last couple of decades. Old men are passing away and opening doors [for] people who have a more modern understanding of what women are capable of.”

In between Revithi and Samuelson, women routinely were banned even from public races like the Boston Marathon, which didn’t allow females to run officially until 1972. Even then, women had to bring a doctor’s note declaring them fit to run, said Maggie Mertens, author of “Better, Faster, Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women.”

Seven years later Norway’s Grete Waitz became the first woman to break 2:30 in the marathon, running 2:27.32 in New York, a time that would have been good for second in the elite men’s race in Chicago that same day.

Because of that, Samuelson said she hardly was blazing a trail in L.A. Instead she was running in the wake of pioneers such as Kathrine Switzer, Bobbi Gibb and Waitz.

“I ran because there was an opportunity, not because I wanted to prove that women could run marathons,” said Samuelson, who still is running at 67. “Women had been proving themselves long before the ’84 Games.

“If anything, maybe my win inspired women to realize that if marathoning were a metaphor for life, anything in life is possible.”

Joan Benoit Samuelson is crowned with a laurel wreath on a winner's podium; at left, then-Lt. Gov. John Kerry.

Still, when Samuelson beat Waitz in Los Angeles, running in prime time during a race that was beamed to television viewers around the world, “that was the game-changer,” Switzer, the first woman to run Boston as an official competitor, told Mertens.

“When people saw it on television … they said, ‘Oh my God, women can do anything.’”

A barrier had fallen and there was no going back.

“You could make the argument that in women’s sports in general, we had to see, we had to have these women prove on the biggest stage possible that they were capable so that these gatekeepers would let women come in and play sports and be part of this world,” Mertens said. “I think it really did help burst open those ideas about what we could do and what we could see.”

As a result, the elite runners who have followed in Samuelson’s footsteps never have known a world in which women were barred from long-distance races.

“I grew up believing that women ran the marathon and that it wasn’t a big deal,” said Kara Goucher, a two-time Olympian and a world championship silver medalist who was 6 when Samuelson won in L.A. “I grew up seeing women run the marathon as the norm. That 100% is a credit to Joanie going out there on the world’s biggest stage and normalizing it.”

Paige Wood, a former U.S. marathon champion, said her high school coach was inspired to run marathons by Samuelson’s story and passed that inspiration on to her runners.

“She used her as an example of why we shouldn’t put any mental limitations on ourselves or shouldn’t let others tell us what we are capable of,” Wood said.

Wood was born in 1996 and remembers her mom, who was very athletic, saying that cheerleading was the only sport available to her in high school in the pre-Samuelson days.

“It’s undeniable, right? The courage she gave other women to start running and start competing,” Wood continued. “The trickle-down effect, it’s not even limited to running. It affected all sports and just made women less afraid to be athletic and try all different sports.”

A year after Samuelson’s victory, the U.S. women’s soccer team played its first game, although it was more than a decade before the WNBA, the country’s first professional women’s league. There are now leagues in six other sports, from ice hockey and lacrosse to rugby and volleyball, and female athletes like Caitlin Clark, Alex Morgan, Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky are household names.

Joan Benoit Samuelson walks away from the finish line at the 2019 Boston Marathon.

Last summer in Paris, Sifan Hassan won the women’s marathon in an Olympic-record 2:22.55 after taking bronze in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters, events that weren’t even on the Olympic calendar when Samuelson won her race. Two months later Kenyan Ruth Chepng’etich became the first woman to run under 2:10 when she won the Chicago Marathon in 2:09:56, averaging 4:57 a mile.

Until 1970, two years before the Boston Marathon was opened to women, only one man had broken 2:10 in the race.

“It says so much about sport and the way that humans don’t quite know what we’re capable of until we do it,” Mertens said. “We’re going to keep pushing those goalposts back. We’ve come so far, and I think that’s more to do with just having the opportunities and know that there aren’t really limits.

“That’s the power of sports. These people are inspiring us; [they] help us see women as powerful athletes but also powerful in politics, as leaders.”

Did Samuelson make that happen? Or did she simply make it happen faster?

“You’d have to decide whether it was a huge defining moment or just a general wave of athletic events that made this possible,” Larsen said. “You know, the more times you put someone up at the plate, sooner or later somebody’s going to hit it out.

“Now it’s acceptable to have a woman running for president. So things are happening and it’s more acceptable to the general public. Was Joanie a big part of it? I would think so.”

Sports

Deion Sanders mourns loss of Colorado quarterback Dominiq Ponder: ‘One of my favorites’

Published

6 hours ago

March 1, 2026

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Deion Sanders mourns loss of Colorado quarterback Dominiq Ponder: ‘One of my favorites’

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Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Dominiq Ponder died this weekend, the team’s head coach Deion Sanders confirmed on Sunday with a social media post.

“God please comfort the Ponder family, friends and loved ones,” Sanders wrote on social media. “Dom was one of my favorites! He was Loved, Respected & a Born Leader. Let’s pray for all that knew him & had the opportunity to be in his presence. Lord you’re receiving a good 1. Comfort us Lord Comfort us.”

Ponder was 23 years old.

Details of Ponder’s death are not yet known.

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders watches his team warm up before an NCAA college football game against TCU Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025, in Fort Worth, Texas. (Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo)

Ponder, a 6-foot-5, 200-pound signal caller, joined the Buffaloes and “Coach Prime’s” program in 2024 after spending time at Bethune-Cookman before making his way to Boulder.

Last season, Ponder played just two games for the Buffaloes while serving in his backup role. He recorded two rush attempts and one pass attempt.

The Opa Locka, Fla., native also received tribute from a fellow quarterback with the Buffaloes, Colton Allen.

Bethune-Cookman QB Dominiq Ponder takes a snap during the Wildcats’ spring game Saturday, April 22, 2023, at Daytona Stadium. (IMAGN)

“Dom, you were a blessing to so many people,” Allen wrote on Instagram. “You had a presence about you that just made everything better. You brought so much joy to me and everyone around you. I’m grateful for every lift, every practice, every rep, every conversation we got to share. I’ll carry those with me for the rest of my life.”

Ponder was going to be a part of Colorado’s spring practices, which are set to begin on Monday. It’s unknown if Sanders will postpone the start due to Ponder’s passing.

Ponder also received a tribute from the University of Central Florida.

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders watches his players warm up before an NCAA college football game against Utah, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025, in Salt Lake City. (Tyler Tate/AP Photo)

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“Our prayers are with Dominiq and the Ponder family along with all in the Colorado football program,” the university’s football account on X wrote.

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Scott Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital.

Sports

No. 2 UCLA women dominate rival USC to finish Big Ten play undefeated

Published

7 hours ago

March 1, 2026

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No. 2 UCLA women dominate rival USC to finish Big Ten play undefeated

Sunday was “Senior Night” for the USC women’s basketball team at Galen Center, but it was the other team’s seniors who stole the show.

Gabriela Jaquez scored 14 points, Kiki Rice had 11 points and four assists and Lauren Betts had 15 rebounds and five assists as UCLA wrapped up the regular season with a 73-50 victory over its rival and finished undefeated in conference play for the first time since going 18-0 in the Pac-10 in 1998-99 under Kathy Olivier.

Having already clinched the regular-season title, UCLA became the first team to navigate the Big Ten schedule without a loss since Maryland in 2014-15.

“These are two elite programs, we knew it would be different tonight, we knew they’d come with fire,” said UCLA coach Cori Close, who improved to 9-4 against the Trojans since counterpart Lindsay Gottlieb started at USC in 2021. “We knew we’d have to do it with our defense, our rebounding and by taking care of the ball.”

It was the Bruins’ 22nd consecutive win, one shy of the record they set last season. Since their lone loss to then-No. 4 Texas on Nov. 26 in Las Vegas, they have won by 20 or more points 17 times.

Ranked second in the nation in both the Associated Press and coaches’ polls behind defending national champion Connecticut (30-0), the Bruins earned the No. 1 seed for the conference tournament in Indianapolis and got a bye into Friday’s quarterfinals.

Charlisse Leger-Walker, nicknamed “X-ray vision” by teammates, equaled her season high with 20 points for the Bruins (28-1, 18-0) while Gianna Kneepkens added 14 points and five assists.

“Anytime we play together we know we can win,” Leger-Walker said. “We did a good job looking into the scout. Every game we just think about going 1-0. People scouting us know that all five players on the court can score the ball.”

UCLA center Lauren Betts, left, controls the ball in front of USC forward Vivian Iwuchukwu during the first half Sunday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

UCLA held USC to 27% shooting in the teams’ first meeting — a 34-point Bruins victory at Pauley Pavilion on Jan. 3 behind Betts’ 18 points. It was USC’s most lopsided loss under coach Lindsay Gottlieb. On Sunday, USC shot 39% and was only three for 19 from three-point range.

“Going undefeated [in conference] is a great step in the right direction towards what we want to accomplish,” said Jaquez, who appreciated the flowers she received before the game from USC. “I love this rivalry. It’s super fun to play against them and it was nice that they honored us too.”

UCLA jumped out to a 14-4 lead in the first five minutes and carried a 19-11 advantage into the second quarter. The Bruins widened the gap to 18 points by halftime, holding the Trojans scoreless for the last 3:08.

USC (17-12, 9-9) opened the second half on an 11-2 run but gave up 14 second-chance points and allowed 22 offensive rebounds.

UCLA guard Kiki Rice, front, and forward Angela Dugalic celebrate as USC guard Kennedy Smith walks away.

“If we get more possessions than our opponent we’re most likely going to win,” Close said. “We didn’t allow one basket on an out-of-bounds play and they lead the conference in that.”

Freshman guard Jazzy Davidson, USC’s leading scorer, got into early foul trouble but still finished with 12 points. She was held to 10 points on four-for-15 shooting in the first meeting.

“It was a great crowd, we were in the fight but we didn’t rebound or shoot well enough,” Gottlieb said. “We wanted to keep them out of our paint. We swarmed Betts, double-teamed her and got it out of her hands but other people scored.”

Londynn Jones, who spent three seasons in Westwood (playing in 108 straight games) before transferring to USC for her senior year, was held to six points in the team’s first meeting and nine points (on four-of-10 shooting) in the rematch. The Trojans’ other senior, Kara Dunn, was held scoreless in the first half and finished with eight points.

“I love Londynn,” Close said. “We think she looks better in blue, but we love her and I told her that. I appreciate all she gave to our programs.”

Asked if this is the best team she has ever coached, Close had a one-word answer.

“Yes.”

Sports

Israeli national gymnastics team suspends all activities after Iranian counter-attack

Published

18 hours ago

March 1, 2026

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Israeli national gymnastics team suspends all activities after Iranian counter-attack

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Israel’s national gymnastics team has suspended all training and team activities amid the recent Iranian counter-attack on the country following the U.S.-assisted strikes on Iran.

The Israel Gymnastics Federation (IGF) provided a statement to Fox News Digital announcing the violence has caused “unavoidable disruptions.”

“The current security situation in our region has resulted in unavoidable disruptions to our regular training schedule and has created significant uncertainty regarding the national teams’ professional plans, particularly as we are at the outset of the international season,” the statement read.

“At this time, all training activities have been temporarily suspended, pending approval from the relevant authorities to safely resume operations. Naturally, the suspension of training and the closure of airspace are causing considerable stress and concern. However, the safety and well-being of our gymnasts and professional staff remain our highest priority. We sincerely hope for safer and calmer days ahead, when we can focus solely on sport.”

A source within the team told Fox News Digital on Saturday that the gymnasts have been moving between bomb shelters since Iran’s counterstrikes began.

Israel’s gymnastics team is considered one of nation’s strongest Olympic programs alongside its Judo and sailing teams. The team is only a week removed from a successful trip at the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Germany, where the country’s star Artem Dolgopyat won the gold medal in floor gymnastics.

Now, the team will have to seek safety until the attacks are over.

The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem has directed all U.S. government employees and their family members to continue to shelter in place either in or near their residences as Iran continues to fire missiles at Israel.

Additionally, the embassy announced that due to the security situation, it would be closed on March 2, and did not give an estimate on when it would be reopening. The closure includes consular sections in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

The embassy also said it is “not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel.” It noted that Ben Gurion Airport remains closed and there there are neither commercial nor charter flights operating from the airport.

On Friday, ahead of the launch of Operation Epic Fury, the embassy gave all non-essential workers permission to leave Israel, with reports that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee urged those looking to leave to do so as soon as possible.

Iranian airstrikes killed at least eight Israelis on Sunday as Tehran’s latest missile barrage landed just miles from Jerusalem.

The strikes landed in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh. Initial reports said four people were killed when missiles landed in a residential area on Sunday, but that death toll rose to eight, according to Israel’s national emergency service.

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Iran’s military has carried out counterattacks against Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East after a joint U.S.-Israeli strike killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.

The strikes also killed several other top Iranian leaders, including the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

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Jackson Thompson is a sports reporter for Fox News Digital covering critical political and cultural issues in sports, with an investigative lens. Jackson’s reporting has been cited in federal government actions related to the enforcement of Title IX, and in legacy media outlets including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Associated Press and ESPN.com.