Sports
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 receives a laurel wreath after winning the Boston Marathon in April 1983. At left, then-Lt. Gov. John Kerry.
(Associated Press)
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, first women’s Olympics marathon winner, walks from the finish line after running in the 2019 Boston Marathon.
(Winslow Townson / Associated Press)
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.”
Trump says there’s ‘no time frame’ to secure Iran deal
Republican Minnesota Senate candidate Tom Weiler joins ‘Fox & Friends’ to discuss President Donald Trump’s blockade in the Strait of Hormuz as the U.S.-Iranian conflict continues and react to Gov. Tim Walz’s, D-Minn., criticism of the president.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Saudi Arabia was among the countries seeing missiles fly into their airspace as a conflict broke out in the Middle East between the U.S. and Iran.
The prospect of Iran targeting its Middle Eastern neighbors like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates put some sporting events on hold and questioned others. Formula 1 races in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were canceled and rumors swirled around whether future WWE events could be held in the kingdom.
Roman Reigns celebrates his win during WWE’s Royal Rumble at Riyadh Season Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Jan. 31, 2026. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE)
As the Trump administration brokered a ceasefire with Iran, WWE announced on Thursday that its Night of Champions premium live event will be held in Riyadh on June 27.
“We are proud to welcome Night of Champions back to Riyadh and look forward to delivering another unforgettable night of WWE action for fans in the Kingdom and around the world,” General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki Al-Sheikh said in a news release.
PRO WRESTLING STARS CHRIS SABIN, ALEX SHELLEY TALK POSSIBILITY OF WWE USING TNA’S GIMMICK MATCHES
Sami Zayn makes his entrance during Night of Champions at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on June 28, 2025. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE)
The release touted that WrestleMania 43 will still be held in Riyadh in 2027. It will be the first time that WrestleMania is held outside the U.S.
WWE president Nick Khan was adamant before WrestleMania 42 that the event will still take place in Saudi Arabia despite the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
“We’re doing WrestleMania next year in Saudi,” he said at a Sports Business Journal event, via The Sporting Tribune. “First time ever, WrestleMania will be outside the United States or Canada. And we’ve had a big, fruitful partnership with them.”
John Cena wrestles CM Punk during Night of Champions at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on June 28, 2025. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
He added that those complaining about WrestleMania being held in Saudi Arabia were a “vocal minority.”
Thousand-dollar tickets and hundreds of dollars in fees shocked some hopeful Olympic fans this month, but they did not keep LA28 from boasting strong sales in the committee’s first ticket drop.
LA28 announced Thursday that it sold more than 4 million Olympic tickets during the first ticket drop. The private organizing committee will have a second ticket drop in August with “refreshed inventory across all Olympic sports at a range of price points.”
But after the popularity of the first purchasing period, many of the lower-priced tickets have already been scooped up.
LA28 said roughly half of the total 1 million $28 tickets were sold during the locals presale, which was limited to people living near venue cities in Southern California and Oklahoma City.
The average price per Olympic ticket is less than $200, which includes a mandatory 24% service fee, and LA28 said about 75% of all tickets, including final events, will be under $400. The premier seats at high-demand events command more than $1,000 per ticket, but the highest priced categories make up about 5% of the total ticket inventory.
Artistic gymnastics sold out the quickest in Drop 1. Four new Olympic sports — flag football, lacrosse, softball and squash — sold all their available inventory for the first drop. After five days of local presale, global ticket sales opened and drew fans from 85 countries and all 50 states and U.S. territories. The largest international sales came from the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico and Japan.
For the first female-majority Olympic Games, LA28 reported that women’s Olympic sessions outsold men’s 93% to 88% during the first drop.
“The response to our initial on-sale was nothing short of historic. Fans from near and far have spoken: the world wants to be part of the LA28 Games,” LA28 chief executive officer Reynold Hoover said in a statement. “The success of Drop 1 is about more than momentum — it reflects LA28’s commitment to delivering a fiscally responsible Games that create a lasting legacy for Los Angeles and its communities.”
Drop 2, which will begin in August, will have additional tickets across all Olympic sports, including those that may have sold out during the first purchasing windows. The registration period for Drop 2 opened Thursday and will continue until July 22. Fans who registered for the first drop of tickets but did not receive a time slot and fans who did not buy their maximum 12 general ticket allotment will automatically be entered into the random lottery Drop 2. The new registration period is only required for anybody who did not sign up for the initial drop.
Fans are still limited to 12 Olympic tickets and up to 12 soccer tickets that don’t count toward the general maximum. There is a four ticket per ceremony limit for the opening and closing ceremony that count toward the 12-ticket maximum, which is cumulative across all LA28 presales and ticket drops.
LA28 will have multiple ticket drops with assigned purchasing time slots before ticket sales move to a first-come, first-served format closer to the Games, which open on July 14, 2028. LA28 began its ticketing process earlier than most other Olympic Games with tickets going on sale more than two years in advance of the opening ceremony. The early timeline has created excitement for the first Summer Olympics in the United States since Atlanta 1996, but also prompted concerns about scheduling. Fans clamored for tickets with little information about which teams or athletes would be competing in most sessions.
Tickets are not refundable, but fans can opt for verified resale when LA28 launches its official resale system in 2027. AXS and Eventim is the official secondary ticket marketplace of the LA28 Games and Ticketmaster and Sports Illustrated Tickets have also signed on as additional verified resale platforms.
LA28 will have 14 million tickets available for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which would eclipse the record of 12 million tickets sold for the Paris Games. Paris 2024 sold an about 9.5 million tickets for the Olympics, but used a different ticket system than LA28. For Paris, 3.5 million tickets were sold during the first phase, during which fans were required to buy tickets to at least three different sports instead of the option for single-event tickets available during LA28’s Drop 1 process.
Tickets for the 2028 Paralympics, which will be the first in L.A.’s history, will go on sale in 2027. Ticket sales and hospitality are expected to cover about $2.5 billion of LA28’s expected $7.1 billion budget for the first Games in L.A. in more than 40 years.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
An envoy for President Donald Trump has reportedly asked FIFA to replace Iran with Italy in the 2026 World Cup this summer.
The Financial Times reported the plan is an effort to repair the relationship between Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which soured after the former’s comments against Pope Leo XIV regarding the war with Iran.
United States special envoy Paolo Zampolli suggested the idea to FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
President Donald Trump receives the FIFA Peace Prize from FIFA President Gianni Infantino during the FIFA World Cup 2026 Official Draw at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 5, 2025. (Emilee Chinn/FIFA)
“I confirm I have suggested to Trump and Infantino that Italy replace Iran at the World Cup. I’m an Italian native, and it would be a dream to see the Azzurri at a U.S.-hosted tournament,” Zampolli told the outlet. “With four titles, they have the pedigree to justify inclusion.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Fox News Digital.
Italy had a chance to be in the World Cup already, but it lost in a penalty shootout to Bosnia and Herzegovina in a qualifying playoff final.
CHELSEA STAR SAYS HE WAS ‘CONFUSED’ TRUMP SHARED STAGE AS PLAYERS CELEBRATED CLUB WORLD CUP WIN
Italy became the first World Cup-winning team to miss three consecutive tournaments after the 4-1 penalty shootout loss earlier this month.
“We still don’t believe it that we’re out and that it happened in this manner,” Italy’s Leonardo Spinazzola told reporters at the time, according to the New York Post.
“It’s upsetting for everyone. For us, for our families and for all the kids who have never seen Italy at a World Cup.”
While Zampolli told Infantino about his proposed plan, FIFA’s president said Iran “for sure” will play in the World Cup despite the conflict involving the U.S.
Mehdi Taremi of Iran celebrates after scoring a goal during a 2026 FIFA World Cup Asian Qualifiers Group A game against Uzbekistan at Azadi Stadium in Tehran March 25, 2025. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu)
“The Iranian team is coming, for sure,” Infantino said during the CNBC Invest in America Forum earlier this month in Washington, D.C.
“We hope that, by then, of course, the situation will be a peaceful situation. That would definitely help. But Iran has to come, of course. They represent their people. They have qualified. The players want to play.”
Infantino visited the Iranian national team in Turkey, which is where it has its training camp.
All three of Iran’s group stage games are scheduled to be played in the U.S. That remains the case after Iranian government officials suggested to FIFA that their games be moved to Mexico because they could not travel to the U.S.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum revealed FIFA’s rejection of Iran’s request, and it is insisting Iran play where it’s scheduled — SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and Lumen Field in Seattle. Iran said earlier this month it would only decide on its team’s participation once it heard from FIFA regarding its relocation request.
Iran is scheduled to play at SoFi Stadium against New Zealand June 16 to begin its tournament. It will also play Belgium at the stadium before finishing group play against Mo Salah and Egypt in Seattle June 26.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino attends an international friendly between Mexico and Portugal at Banorte Stadium in Mexico City March 28, 2026. (Antonio Torres/FIFA/Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last month that Iran would be welcome to compete in the World Cup as scheduled, though it might not be “appropriate” considering the conflict.
“The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety,” he wrote.
Trump also told Politico, “I really don’t care,” when asked about Iran’s participation in the tournament. Infantino, who has a strong relationship with Trump, said Trump has “reiterated” to him that the U.S. welcomes Iran’s team to compete.
Fox News’ Paulina Dedaj and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
-
News5 minutes agoU.S. soldier charged with suspected Polymarket insider trading over Maduro raid
-
New York2 hours agoCommunication Failures Preceded Deadly Crash at LaGuardia, N.T.S.B. Says
-
Detroit, MI2 hours agoPart of Detroit Riverwalk reopens after infrastructure work
-
San Francisco, CA2 hours ago49ers draft picks: Full list of team’s round-by-round selections
-
Dallas, TX2 hours agoCowboys draft picks tracker: Every selection, live grades
-
Miami, FL3 hours ago5 arrested in undercover teen sex trafficking bust in Miami, authorities say
-
Boston, MA3 hours agoBoston police seek missing 12-year-old from Dorchester
-
Denver, CO3 hours agoRoadrunner spotted far from its usual range in Denver surprises birders