Stamata Revithi - the unknown first female Marathon runner of the modern era

According to Wikipedia:

Stamata Revithi (Greek: Σταμάτα Ρεβίθη) (1866 – after 1896) was a Greek woman who ran the marathon course of 40 kilometers (26.2 miles) during the 1896 Summer Olympics, one day after the men had run the official race. The organizers of the Games excluded women from competition, but Revithi insisted on running. Although she was not allowed to enter the Panathinaiko Stadium at the end of her race, Revithi finished the marathon in about 5 hours and 30 minutes, and found witnesses to sign their names and verify the running time. She intended to present this documentation to the Hellenic Olympic Committee, in the hopes that they would recognize her achievement, but it is unknown whether she finally did that or not. There is no account of Revithi's life after the end of the Games.

According to certain contemporary sources, another woman called "Melpomene" also ran the marathon race in 1896. There is some debate among Olympic historians as to whether or not Revithi and Melpomene are the same person.

Biographical elements

Before the 1896 Olympics

Stamata Revithi was born in Syros in 1866. Records of her life in 1896, show that she lived in poverty in Piraeus. At that point she had given birth to two children, a son who died in 1895 aged seven and another child who was seventeen months old at the time of the 1896 Olympics. Contemporary sources do not mention her having a husband, so she was likely widowed. Olympic historian Athanasios Tarasouleas described Revithi as blonde and thin with large eyes, looking much older than her age.

Revithi believed that she could gain employment in Athens and walked there from her home—a distance of 9 kilometers (5.6 mi). Her journey took place several days prior to the Olympic marathon, a special race of 40 kilometers (25 mi) invented as part of the athletics program, and based on a Michel Bréal's idea of a race from the city of Marathon to the Pnyx.

En route to Athens, Revithi encountered a male runner along the road. He gave her money and advised her to run the marathon and win, in order to become famous, and, consequently, earn money or find a job more easily. After this discussion Revithi decided to run the race: she had enjoyed long-distance running as a child, and believed that she could beat the male competitors.

The 1896 Olympic Games were the first Olympic Games held in the Modern era, and the most important international multi-sport event Greece had ever hosted. The rules of the Games generally excluded women from competition. Influenced by both his times—in the Victorian era women were considered to be inferior to men—and his adoration of the ancient Olympic Games, when only men were allowed to participate in the events, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the visionary of the modern Olympic Games, was not in favor of women's participation in the Olympic Games or in sports generally. He believed that a woman's greatest achievement would be to encourage her sons to be distinguished in sports and to applaud a man's effort.

1896 marathon

Revithi arrived at the race location, the small village of Marathon, on the Thursday, 9 April [O.S. 28 March]. The athletes had already assembled for the following day's race. Revithi attracted the attention of the reporters, and was warmly greeted by Marathon's mayor, who sheltered her in his house. She answered the reporters' questions, and was quick-witted, when a male runner from Chalandri teased her, predicting that, when she would enter the Stadium, there would be no crowds left. Revithi retorted that he shouldn't insult women, since male Greek athletes had already been humiliated by the Americans.

Prior to the start of the race on the morning of Friday 10 April [O.S. 29 March], the old priest of Marathon, Ioannis Veliotis, was scheduled to say a prayer for the athletes in the church of Saint John. Veliotis refused to bless Revithi because she was not an officially recognized athlete. The organizing committee ultimately refused her entry into the race. Officially, she was rejected because the deadline for participations had expired; however, as Olympic historians David Martin and Roger Gynn point out, the real problem was her gender. According to Tarasouleas, the organizers promised that she would compete with a team of American women in another race in Athens, which however never took place.

Aftermath

There is no account of Revithi's life after running the marathon. Although some newspapers printed articles about her story in the buildup to the marathon, these reports never followed up on her life after the race. It is not known whether she met Philimon or if she found a job. As Tarasouleas stated, "Stamata Revithi was lost in the dust of history". Violet Piercy, of the United Kingdom, was timed in the first officially recognized marathon race completed by a woman, when she clocked a time of 3 hours and 40 seconds in a British race on 3 October 1926. Women were finally allowed to run the Olympic marathon at the 1984 Summer Olympics, when American Joan Benoit, won the inaugural race in a time of 2 hours and 24 seconds.

Melpomene

In March 1896, a French-language newspaper in Athens (the Messager d' Athènes) reported that "there was talk of a woman who had enrolled as a participant in the Marathon race. In the test run which she completed on her own [...] she took 4½ hours to run the distance of 42 [sic] kilometers which separates Marathon from Athens." Later that year, Franz Kémény, a founding IOC member from Hungary, wrote in German that, "indeed a lady, Miss Melpomene, completed the 40 kilometers marathon in 4½ hours and requested an entry into the Olympic Games competition. This was reportedly denied by the commission." According to Martin and Gynn, "a peculiarity here is why there is no first name for Melpomene". The Messager report faded into obscurity for about 30 years before it was revived in 1927 in an issue of Der Leichtathlet.

Painting of the Muse Melpomene by Edward Simmons (1891, Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.). According to certain modern Olympic historians and journalists, Melpomene and Revithi are the same person, and the Greek woman was attributed the name of the Muse.


Olympic historian Karl Lennartz asserts that two women ran the marathon in 1896, and that the name "Melpomene" is confirmed by both Kémény and Alfréd Hajós, two-time Olympic swim champion of 1896. Lennartz presents the following accounts of events: a young woman named Melpomene wanted to run the race, and completed the distance in 4½ hours at the end of February or the beginning of March. The organizing committee did not allow her, however, to run, and the newspaper Akropolis criticized the committee for its decision. The Olympic Marathon took place on 10 April [O.S. 29 March] 1896, but another female runner, Stamata Revithi, took 5½ hours to run the course on 11 April [O.S. 30 March] 1896. The newspapers Asti, New Aristophanes and Atlantida reported this on 12 April [O.S. 31 March] 1896.

On the other hand, Tarasouleas argues that no contemporary press reports in Greek newspapers mention Melpomene by name, while the name Revithi appears many times; Tarasouleas suggests that Melpomene and Revithi are the same person, and Martin and Green argue that "a contemporary account referring to Revithi as a well-known marathon could explain the earlier run by a woman over the marathon course—this was by Revithi herself, not Melpomene". The daily Athens newspaper Estia of 4 April [O.S. 23 March] 1896 refers to "the strange woman, who, having run a few days ago in the Marathon as a try-out, intends to compete the day after tomorrow. Today she came to our offices and said 'should my shoes hinder me, I will remove them on the way and continue barefoot'." Moreover, Tarasouleas notes that on 13 March [O.S. 1 March] 1896, another local newspaper indicated that a woman and her baby had registered to run the Marathon, but again the name of that woman is not mentioned. Trying to resolve the mystery, Tarasouleas asserts that "perhaps Revithi had two names, or perhaps for reasons unknown she was attributed the name of the Muse Melpomene".