Marathon and cross country · 1970s–1980s

Grete Waitz

Won New York nine times, having never run a marathon before the first one.

9 wins

New York City Marathon

The first one

In 1978 she went to New York as a track runner who had never raced the distance. She won, and broke the world best. She has said she was so wrecked afterwards she told her husband she would never do it again.

Nine

She won New York nine times. She also took the first women's world marathon title in 1983 and Olympic silver behind Joan Benoit Samuelson in 1984. Four World Cross Country titles alongside it.

What she changed

She arrived when women's distance running was still fighting for events to exist. The 1984 Olympic marathon she ran in was the first one there had ever been. Her results are part of why the argument ended.

The last one

In 1992 she ran New York alongside Fred Lebow, the race's founder, who was being treated for brain cancer. They finished together, well outside her own times. It is the race people who were there talk about.

What to steal

Confidence is built by doing the thing, including the first time when you have no evidence at all.

Where they come up

Checkpoint 07Earned ConfidenceRan her first marathon at New York in 1978, having never raced the distance, and won it in a world best. She won that race nine times in all. The debut looked like it came from nowhere and it came from a decade of hard track racing behind it. The confidence was already banked before the event existed on her calendar.

All 26 case studies. Profiles are factual and drawn from the public record. Where a performance carries an asterisk, this app says so rather than leaving it out.