100km of Bienne: the forgotten path of women in ultrarunning

At a time when women are still excluded from most running competitions, the Biel 100km race opens up an exciting avenue into the forgotten history of women's ultramarathon running.

A classification line that changes the narrative

Delving into the Spiridon archives, one sometimes uncovers classification lines that shift an entire historical narrative. This one comes down to a single name: Käthi Knuchel. In 1962, in Biel, Switzerland, she officially completed the Biel 100-kilometer race in 20 hours and 13 minutes. That year, two women appeared in the race results. The official record of the Biel Races lists Käthi Knuchel as the female winner of the 1962 edition, and the database of the Deutsche Ultramarathon-Vereinigung indicates, for the same year, 197 men and 2 women classified in the 100km race.

Two women.
One hundred kilometers.
In 1962.

The key dates usually remembered

When recounting the beginnings of women's long-distance running, the same milestones often resurface.

There's Bobbi Gibb, the first woman to run Boston without an official bib in 1966. There's Kathrine Switzer, registered with a bib in 1967 despite the prohibition. Then came the major official openings of the 1970s. The Boston Athletic Association reminds us that the official women's division of the Boston Marathon was only created in 1972.

Those who dig a little deeper also know the stories of Odette Vetter, Lucie Bréard, and all those women who forced their way into male running groups. In Switzerland, Morat-Fribourg only officially allowed women in 1977, the year Marijke Moser became the first female winner of the event.

And at the Olympic Games, the women's marathon only arrived in 1984, in Los Angeles, with Joan Benoit's victory.

In light of these dates, Biel raises questions.

How could women have been officially classified in a 100-kilometer race as early as 1962, while other shorter, more visible, or more institutional events were still closed to them?

Biel, a unique race

This is where the Biel 100km race becomes fascinating.

Because this race wasn't just a race in the strict sense. Originally, you could run it, but you could also walk it. This nuance seems almost absurd today for all those who practice trail running - where you run, you walk - but it apparently could change everything in the 1960s.

This peculiarity may have opened a door. Where some races still prohibited women from running, an event combining running, walking, and endurance could create a more flexible zone, less locked down by the sports federations of the time.

The archives do not explicitly state that this was a strategy of the organizers. They do not recount the conversations, the resistances, or the compromises. But they provide an essential fact: in 1962, in Biel, two women were classified.

Ultra before ultra

The Biel 100km is one of those legendary events that are too little discussed today.

Long before the ultra boom, long before the word became familiar to Sunday runners and mountain enthusiasts alike, men and women were already setting off for one hundred kilometers. At night - a nod to the SaintéLyon. On the road. With their willpower, their madness, and that strange camaraderie created by long distances.

To younger people discovering ultra today, it might be worth remembering: running for a very long time is not a recent invention. The ancients did it before us. On roads, in the mountains, on routes sometimes much less marked, much less supervised, with equipment that would make us smile today.

Ultra was not born with social media, GPS watches, and perfectly timed refueling stops.

1971, a photo and a Welsh winner

Biel has existed since 1959. The first editions were still modest, almost confidential, but the race quickly established itself in the European endurance imagination.

In 1971, the year of this exceptional photograph we found in our Spiridon archives, the Welshman Lynn Hughes, from Glamorgan, won the event in 7 hours and 42 minutes. Among women, Eva Westphal, from Hamburg, won in 12 hours and 48 minutes.

These times already say a lot. In 1971, ultra was not yet spoken of as it is today. "Finisher" was not used with modern vocabulary. Every effort was not recounted in stories. But people were already running very long distances.

And women, in Biel, had already been there for almost ten years.

Two women, then others

Female participation didn't stop at this first record in 1962.

From then on, the numbers grew. The DUV database indicates 2 women classified in 1963, then 10 in 1964, 11 in 1966, 16 in 1967, 30 in 1968, 49 in 1970, and again 49 in

One can imagine these women progressing through the night, on a hundred-kilometer road, in a sporting world that was not yet ready to fully acknowledge their place. They undoubtedly walked. Perhaps a lot. Perhaps officially. But how can we not think that once on the road, far from the strictest gazes, they also started to run?

Käthi Knuchel, a fragile trace

She reminds us that the history of women's running was not written only in the major marathons, nor solely in the now famous images of Boston. It was also written in more discreet races, in less publicized cities, on night roads, among classifications that almost no one re-reads today.

Biel tells this story: a Swiss 100-kilometer race that, perhaps unknowingly, already carried something very modern. The idea that endurance belongs to those who accept to go all the way.

A path to document

And this is the whole point of archival work: accepting that history is never totally fixed. The more we search, the more we cross-reference, the more we find forgotten traces, and the more precise, nuanced, and vivid history becomes.

This discovery about the Biel 100km therefore deserves to be extended. Much remains to be documented: finding possible photos, consulting local newspapers of the time, contacting archives, identifying families or descendants, understanding how the organizers then presented this event where one could run, walk, or alternate between the two.

We will continue this work diligently, with the support of a journalist. Because this subject goes far beyond a simple classification anecdote. It may open an important avenue on the place of women in the first major endurance events, in Switzerland, France, and elsewhere.

There will therefore be a follow-up.

Photo: The winner of the Biel 100 kilometers in 1971, the Welshman Hugues, 2 km from the finish. Spiridon photo April 1972 - Yves Jeannotat