Stamata Revithi: the woman who ran the first Olympic marathon without a bib, in 1896

On April 10, 1896, on the road connecting the plains of Marathon to Athens, forty-nine men set off for the first marathon event of the modern Olympic Games. No women were permitted to start: for Baron Pierre de Coubertin, reviver of the Games, top-level women's sport was "impractical, uninteresting, and unaesthetic." Twenty days later, however, a Greek woman ran the 40 kilometers of the same route alone. Her name: Stamata Revithi.

A candidate they refused to hear

The story begins a few days before the official race. According to research by Greek historian Athanasios Tarasouleas, published in the Olympic Review, the Athenian newspaper Estia mentioned on March 23, 1896, "the runner Stamata Revithi, that strange woman who, after running a few days ago to train, intends to participate in the competition the day after tomorrow." Another local paper even reported on March 1st that a woman had allegedly registered with her baby for the marathon event. The Messager d'Athènes, for its part, described an "active and determined woman" who had allegedly covered the entire course as a trial run at the beginning of March, without stopping, except to eat a few oranges.

The organizing committee naturally refused to register her. No matter: on March 30, 1896, Stamata Revithi set off from Marathon and reached Athens in 5 hours and 30 minutes, without a bib, without official supplies, and without the slightest encouragement from a crowd that was not expecting her.

The priest they prevented from running

She was not the only one to clash with the burgeoning sporting establishment that year. An Orthodox priest from Livadia, Spyros Matzakos, also tried to participate in the official marathon. He was forbidden from doing so on several occasions, and the Holy Synod even ordered his diocese to discipline him as an example. Two different paths, the same refusal opposed to anyone who did not fit the image the nascent Games wanted to project of themselves.

Melpomene, the legend that long obscured the real name

For decades, the story of this clandestine race circulated under another name: Melpomene, that of the Greek muse of Tragedy. Some researchers, referring to a 1964 article, had reported this name without ever being able to confirm it with certainty. Archival work on the Greek press of the era made it possible to uncover the real name, Stamata Revithi, while still leaving a gray area between period documents, reconstructed legends, and oral history. This is precisely the difficulty in telling the history of women in sport: official sources do not record them, and it is snippets of newspapers, street rumors, and a few persistent historians that allow us, a century later, to give them a face.

An accidental heroine, celebrated in verse

Stamata Revithi's run made enough of an impression to inspire, a few months later, a poem by the Frenchman François Coppée, published on July 26, 1896, in L'Illustré Soleil du Dimanche:

"She is truly superb like this; her hair
Has the shiny reflection of raven wings;
And her eyes, despite the tan of her skin
And the heavy black hair twisted like cables,
Her eyes are blue, like the sea thistle."

It would then take nearly seventy years for another Greek marathon runner to make herself known, and 1984 for the women's marathon to finally be included in the Olympic program in Los Angeles, with the victory of American Joan Benoit.

What this race still says today

Stamata Revithi never had a bib, an official time, or a podium. She ran anyway, on the sole merit of her determination, in a world that had already decided that this course did not concern her. This run without authorization, without an official record, and without immediate recognition is, in a way, one of the very first acts of free running in modern history: running for oneself, despite the opinions of those who distribute the bibs. A spirit that the Spiridon movement, born nearly three-quarters of a century later, would in turn carry on.

Franck Tuil - Author - Specialist in running culture