(5 of 11)
U.S. trials in May. For death-defying suspense, the spectacle of Gabriela reeling to a 37th-place finish was the most prolonged horror of the Games. She is a ski instructor in Sun Valley, Idaho, grotesquely adept at staying upright. Nobody in the Coliseum could either help, touch or help being touched by the looniness of the long-distance runner.
For 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 ran away completely and was astonished when no one kept up. "I didn't complain," she said. "I just sort of followed the yellow brick road."
The other side of vainglory, Benoit is so down-home she picks blueberries and puts them up in preserves. Responding to a question about fame, she referred to her impending marriage: "People have wondered whether I'm going to keep my maiden name. Well, I'm going to drop it as quickly as I can." It even crossed her mind that rushing out so far ahead might be "showboating," but only if she faded along the way. A banner from Bowdoin College (her alma mater) made Benoit grin, and a mural of herself on a building prompted her to look away. "I'm not trying to make any statement," she said. "I run because I love to run."
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, "She had come so far," but had to agree. "Nothing is more important than life."
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.
When last the Los Angeles Coliseum greeted a winning Olympic marathon champion, he was Juan Carlos Zabala of Argentina, in 1932. Zabala would have finished a poor tenth to Benoit.