 Benoit in 2008 | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Joan Benoit Samuelson |
| Born | (1957-05-16)May 16, 1957 (age 67) Cape Elizabeth, Maine, U.S. |
| Height | 5 ft 2 in (157 cm) |
| Weight | 100 lb (45 kg) |
| Spouse | Scott Samuelson (m. September 29, 1984)[1] |
| Sport | |
| Country | USA |
| Sport | Track and field athletics |
| Event(s) | 3000 m,Marathon |
| College team | Bowdoin,North Carolina State |
| Club | Athletics West |
| Coached by | Bob Sevene |
| Achievements and titles | |
| Olympic finals | 1984 |
Medal record | |
Joan Benoit Samuelson (born May 16, 1957) is anAmericanmarathonrunner who was the first women'sOlympic Games marathon champion, winning the gold medal at the1984 Summer Olympics inLos Angeles.[2] She held the fastest time for an American woman at theChicago Marathon for 32 years after winning the race in 1985.[3][4] Her time at theBoston Marathon was the fastest time by an American woman in that race for 28 years.[5] She was inducted into theMaine Women's Hall of Fame in 2000.
Born inCape Elizabeth, Maine, Benoit took to long-distance running to help recover from a broken leg suffered whileslalom skiing.[6] AtBowdoin College, she excelled inathletics. In 1977, after two years at Bowdoin, she accepted a running scholarship toNorth Carolina State, where she began concentrating solely on her running. She earned All-America honors at NC State in both 1977 and 1978. In 1978, she helped lead theWolfpack to theAtlantic Coast Conferencecross-country championship. She won the Broderick Award (Honda Sports Award) as the nation's best female collegiate cross-country runner for 1979–80.[7]
After returning to Bowdoin to complete her degree, she entered the 1979 Boston Marathon as a relative unknown. She won the race, wearing aBoston Red Sox cap,[8] in 2:35:15, knocking eight minutes off the competition record. In 1981, she captured the U.S. 10,000 meter championship, posting a time of 33:37.50. Despite havingsurgery on herAchilles tendons two years earlier, she repeated her marathon success with a victory in 1983, setting a course record of 2:22:43. That took more than two minutes off the world's best time, set by Norway'sGrete Waitz in theLondon Marathon only a day earlier. Her Boston record was not broken for another 11 years.[9]
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In March 1984, Benoit injured her knee during a 20-mile training run, forcing her to undergo arthroscopic knee surgery just 17 days before the United States Olympic Women's Marathon Trials were scheduled. However, she recovered from the surgery much more quickly than expected and was the favorite in the trials atOlympia, Washington. She beat runner-upJulie Brown by 30 seconds, winning in 2:31:04. Three months later, she competed in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, winning the first Olympic Women's Marathon in 2:24:52, several hundred meters ahead ofGrete Waitz,Rosa Mota, andIngrid Kristiansen.[10]
Benoit enjoyed success at non-marathon distances as well, winning the prestigiousFalmouth Road Race (7.1 miles), a total of six times (1976, 1978, 1981–1983, and 1985), breaking the course record on four of those occasions.
Although she won the 1985Chicago marathon, defeating Kristiansen and Mota in an American Record time of 2:21:21 (that would last as the AR for 18 years until broken byDeena Kastor in 2003 in London),[11] Benoit was hampered for some years after her Olympic victory by injuries and struggled to compete in major races. She received the 1985James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States.
Benoit wroteRunning Tide (1987) andRunning for Women (1995).
In 1998, she founded theBeach to Beacon 10K Road Race, a 10 km (6.2 mi) race held in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, each August, going from Crescent Beach State Park to Fort Williams Park and Portland Head Light. The race attracts many of the world's top distance runners. Elite runners often run this race and then, the following weekend, run theFalmouth Road Race onCape Cod,Massachusetts. Benoit won that race several times, and ran it last in 2022, finishing as the 69th woman overall and first in her age group.
In 2003, at age 46, Benoit won the Maine half-marathon, defeating a field dominated by runners two decades her junior, and she was faster than all but six men overall, finishing in 1:18. In 2006, she helped pace former cycling championLance Armstrong as he competed in theNew York City Marathon. At the 2008 USOlympic Team trials, at the age of 50, she finished in 2:49:08, setting a new US 50+ record and beating her personal goal at the time of a mid-2:50s marathon. When she ran theNew York City Marathon on November 1, 2009, she broke the Senior Masters record for runners older than 50 with a final time of 2:49:09.[12] On October 10, 2010, she ran 2:47:50 for the 43rd place at the Chicago Marathon—the site of her American record a quarter century earlier—missing her goal of qualifying for an eighth Olympic Marathon Team Trials race by 1:50, but recording the fastest-ever performance by a woman over 52. Later that month, she ran in the Athens Classic Marathon for fun and finished in 3:02, the slowest time of her career; she was not fully healed from her Chicago performance.[13] In April 2011, Joan competed in the Boston Marathon, completing the course in 2:51:29 and placing 1st in her age group. Between 2013 and 2015, Samuelson ran the Boston Marathon each year, setting three of the four fastest marathon times for the 55–59 age group. None are recognized by theWorld Masters Athletics since the Boston Marathon course does not comply with IAAF regulations. Her times are 2:50:33 (2013), 2:52:15 (2014), and 2:54:26 (2015). In 2019, Benoit ran the Boston Marathon again, forty years after her 1979 win. She had hoped to be within 40 minutes of her 1979 time, but did even better than that with a time of 3:04:00, within thirty minutes of her winning time, again winning her age group (60–64).[14]
Winning the race four times, Benoit has run theBix 7 road race inDavenport, Iowa, annually since 1983. A bronze statue of Benoit andBill Rodgers was erected near the Bix finish line in 2007.[15][16]
Benoit resides inFreeport, Maine,[17] where thehigh school athletic complex is named the "Joan Benoit Samuelson Track and Field".[18] In addition to her running, as of 2014[update], she serves as a coach to women'scross-country and long-distance athletes, and is a motivational speaker and sports commentator. She is featured on the Nike+ iPod system as one of the congratulatory voices. Benoit and her husband, Scott Samuelson, whom she met when they were both students atBowdoin College,[19] have two children, daughter Abby and son Anders, who are runners in their own right and shared the running of the 2014 Boston Marathon with their mother.[20]
Benoit was inducted into theNational Distance Running Hall of Fame in 1998, theMaine Women's Hall of Fame in 2000,[21] theNational Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2004 and theUSATF Masters Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2017, a plaque honoring her was unveiled in theL.A. Memorial Coliseum's Court of Honor.[22]
In 2019, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of her first Boston Marathon win, Benoit and her daughter Abby ran together as they had done in previous marathons. Joan recorded a run time of 3:04:00, which was within 40 minutes of her original time[23] which was a promise she had made prior to competing in that year's edition of the Boston Marathon. This allowed her to win her age group (60–64) by nearly nine minutes, but falling short of the overall (3:01:30) fastest time by a woman over 60 in a marathon.
| Year | Competition | Venue | Position | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Representing the United States | ||||
| 1978 | Bermuda Marathon | Bermuda | 2nd | 2:50:54 |
| 1979 | Boston Marathon | Boston, United States | 1st | 2:35:15 |
| 1980 | Auckland Marathon | Auckland, New Zealand | 1st | 2:31:23 |
| 1981 | Boston Marathon | Boston, United States | 3rd | 2:30:17 |
| 1982 | Nike OTC Marathon | Eugene, United States | 1st | 2:26:12 |
| 1983 | Boston Marathon | Boston, United States | 1st | 2:22:43 |
| 1984 | Summer Olympics | Los Angeles, United States | 1st | 2:24:52 |
| 1985 | Chicago Marathon | Chicago, United States | 1st | 2:21:21 |
| 1988 | New York City Marathon | New York City, United States | 3rd | 2:32:40 |
| 1991 | Boston Marathon | Boston, United States | 4th | 2:26:54 |
| 1991 | New York City Marathon | New York City, United States | 6th | 2:33:49 |
| 2013 | Boston Marathon | Boston, United States | 47th (overall) 1st (AG) | 2:50:29 |
| 2019 | Boston Marathon | Boston, United States | 245th (overall) 1st (AG) | 3:04:00 |
AG = Samuelson is credited with winning her age group at the 2013 and 2019 Boston Marathon. The 2013 race is the fastest marathon by a woman aged 55–59 but is not recognized byWorld Masters Athletics because Boston is not recognized under IAAF regulations as a world record qualifying marathon course.
| Records | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Women's marathon world record holder 18 April 1983 – 21 April 1985 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Women's Half marathon World record holder 18 January 1981 – 15 May 1982 18 September 1983 – 9 March 1989 | Succeeded by |
| 3000m |
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| 5000m | |
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
