When one woman fought a different marathon injustice

It’s fairly safe to assume that if Kathy Switzer was running her first Boston Marathon on Monday afternoon, she would have been held back from finishing, with thousands of others.

I wasn’t the only one to suddenly think of the 20th century athletic icon when the full horror of Boylston Street began to unravel but, although I was nowhere near the city and watched it on social media and CNN like everyone else, Switzer offered reassurance to many people like me who felt helpless and confused.

Hers was a simpler but equally far-reaching clash with injustice: in 1967, she defied the age-old ban on women in the famous old race and completed it in four hours and 20 minutes despite the infamous attempts of Jock Semple, the Glaswegian whose role as race co-director had often turned comically violent over the years.