At Champions Breakfast, Women Who Won Boston Marathon Share Their Stories

BOSTON (CBS) -- At a Boston Athletic Association's Champions Breakfast Sunday morning, the BAA celebrated 50 years of women running the Boston marathon by honoring several of the women who became marathon champions.

At the breakfast, held at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel to honor past marathon winners, running greats Bobbi Gibb, Joan Benoit-Samuelson, Catherine Ndereba, and Uta Pippig shared their stories of running--and winning--the Boston Marathon as women.

Boston Marathon runner Patrick Lawless said there was "a lot of inspiration and history" at the event.

At the breakfast, current Boston Marathon runners got the opportunity to listen to  past legends, champions, and pioneers, like Gibb. She became the first woman to have run the entire marathon in 1966, when she tucked her long blonde ponytail under a hooded sweatshirt and sneaked out onto the course.

"Maybe the main thing I was doing running the Boston Marathon was healing the split between men and women, and trying to bring men and women together," said Gibb.

Gibb said the country has come a long way since then.

"This is a country where everyone is free, and there's no difference based on gender or national origin or race," said Gibb.

Pippig, who won three marathons in the 1990s, said her love of running started as a little girl living in a communist country.

"In East Germany, we had no freedom of speech," said Pippig. "There was a lot of suppression and oppression...I wanted to break out, I wanted to do my own thing, I wanted to feel what it means to connect with nature, to run, without any other things, just some shorts, socks, some shoes. Go in the forest, you don't have to pay a fee, nothing."

More than 14,000 women are running this year's Boston Marathon.

WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Kim Tunnicliffe reports

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• Kim Tunnicliffe