On October 19, 1974, Zozo Christodoulou did something that no other Greek woman had done before. She ran in the original Marathon race, making history for Greek women.
At the time, the race was called the “Open Marathon” or “The People’s Marathon.”
There had been female runners in the race before, of course, but they had all been foreigners. Greece was far behind the western world at the time regarding female empowerment.
Christodoulou said in a later interview that when she was training for the race, men would often shout at her to “go wash the dishes.”
Even her female friends would tell her to stop running because it would “ruin her figure.”
All that was not enough to stop her, however. She was determined to keep training and keep running, just waiting for the big day.
“Just wanted to run the Marathon”
As she said, she didn’t care about being the first Greek woman to run the Marathon. She just wanted to run it.
At the time, Christodoulou was just twenty-three years old. She ran the race wearing number 606 and crossed the finish line at Panathenaic Stadium in 5 hours, 1 minute and 20 seconds, finishing sixth among women—and leaving about two hundred male athletes trailing behind her.
At that particular Marathon, there were forty-four female athletes besides Christodoulou competing in a field of 650 men.
“I had to finish, to convince women that they could do it,” she said in an interview years later. “Otherwise, I would confirm that those who have the opposite opinion are right.”
Christodoulou, who was born in 1951 in Cairo, Egypt, moved with her family to Athens when she was sixteen years of age.
She began her athletic career at the Athletic Club of Filothei, and, for a long time, she was the only woman on the team.
In 1968, as she was beginning her studies in psychology, she joined the Ethnikos athletics club, where she trained to run the one hundred and two hundred meters.
Christodoulou then joined the group of women competing in the 1,500 meters, which was the maximum distance allowed for women to race at the time.
In fact, women were not allowed to exercise as many times as they wanted because there was a general belief that they didn’t have the stamina for it. They were not even allowed to have their own locker rooms.
In October of 1974, just days before the “Open” Marathon, Christodoulou read in the newspaper that forty-four female athletes from Germany would be coming to participate in the race.
“I did not want to prove anything in Marathon race”
Although she had not trained properly for a marathon, she requested permission from the Athletics Federation to participate, and, after receiving a special certificate from a cardiologist, she was allowed to run.
Four days before the race, she completed her longest run thus far, covering 21.5 km, (13.3 miles), or half the distance of a marathon.
Christodoulou said that she recalls that on the day of the race, along the route, people shouted at her, “Are you Greek? You will finish first!”
People’s perceptions had suddenly and totally reversed when they saw her running and covering a large portion of the distance.
When the female marathoner finally entered the stadium at the end of the race, she said she could not describe the feeling of joy and pride as people cheered for her.
The first female Greek Marathon runner had made her dream come true.
“I wanted to run in the 1974 Marathon. I did not want to prove anything. I just wanted to run. I was going to finish the route. Many thought I wanted to prove that women can do it. But I was not interested in this. I just wanted to run.”
