Stamata Revithi

Stamata Revithi ( _el. Σταμάτα Ρεβίθη) (1866 – after 1896) was a Greek woman who ran the marathon course of convert|42|km|mi|sp=us during the 1896 Summer Olympics, one day after the men had run the official race. The organizers of the Games excluded women from competition, but Revithi insisted on running. Although she was not allowed to enter the Panathinaiko Stadium at the end of her race, Revithi finished the marathon in about 5 hours and 30 minutes, and found witnesses to sign their names and verify the running time. She intended to present this documentation to the Hellenic Olympic Committee, in the hopes that they would recognize her achievement, but it is unknown whether she finally did that or not. There is no account of Revithi's life after the end of the Games.

According to certain contemporary sources, another woman called "Melpomene" also ran the marathon race in 1896. There is some debate among Olympic historians as to whether or not Revithi and Melpomene are the same person.

Biographical elements

Before the 1896 Olympics

Stamata Revithi was born in Syros in 1866. Records of her life in 1896, show that she lived in poverty in Piraeus. At that point she had given birth to two children, a son who died in 1895 aged seven and another child who was seventeen months old at the time of the Olympics. Contemporary sources do not mention her having a husband, so she was likely widowed.Olympic historian Athanasios Tarasouleas described Revithi as blonde and thin with large eyes, looking much older than her age.Tarasouleas, "The Female Spiridon Loues", 11]

Revithi believed that she could gain employment in Athens and walked there from her home. Her journey took place several days prior to the Olympic marathon. En route, she encountered a male runner along the road. He gave her money and advised her to run the marathon and win, in order to find a job. After this discussion Revithi decided to run the race: she had enjoyed long-distance running as a child, and believed that she could beat the male competitors. [It is thought that Revithi's goal in this decision was to secure a position for work (DeFrantz, "Women in Sport", 185). Jere Longman ( [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E7DE103CF933A2575BC0A961958260 In Footsteps of History] ) wonders "why anyone would want to run 24 miles for a civil service job". Emet Malone believes that ( [http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2007/0814/1186957846269.html And at the Starting Line...] ), after Revithi was rejected, "she ran the course anyway to prove a point".]

The rules of the 1896 Olympic Games generally excluded women from competition. Influenced by both his times—in the Victorian era women were considered to be inferior to men [Domosh–Seager, "Putting Women in Place", 143; Payne, "Different but Equal", 21] —and his adoration of the ancient Olympic Games, when only men were allowed to participate in the events, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the visionary of the modern Olympic Games, was not in favor of women's participation in the Olympic Games or in sports generally. He believed that a woman's greatest achievement would be to encourage her sons to be distinguished in sports and to applaud a man's effort. [DeFrantz, "Women in Sport", 185; Miragaya, "The Female Olympian", 313–314]

1896 marathon

Revithi arrived at the race location, the small village of Marathon, on the Thursday, April 9 smaller| [O.S. March 28] . The athletes had already assembled for the following day's race. Revithi attracted the attention of the reporters, and was warmly greeted by Marathon's mayor, who sheltered her in his house. [Eleftheratos, [http://www.e-tipos.com/content/staticfiles/issues/2008/04/12/Review/review_46%2031.pdf April 11, 1896] (PDF)] She answered the reporters' questions, and was quick-witted, when a male runner from Chalandri teased her.

Prior to the start of the race on the morning of Friday April 10 smaller| [O.S. March 29] , the old priest of Marathon, Ioannis Veliotis, was scheduled to say a prayer for the athlets in the church of Saint John. Veliotis refused to bless Revithi because she was not an officially recognized athlete. The organizing committee ultimately refused her entry into the race. Officially, she was rejected because the deadline for participations had expired; however, the real problem was her gender. [Another athlete, Carlo Airoldi, was also not allowed to run because he was a professional (Martin–Gynn, "Running through the Ages", 21).] According to Tarasouleas, the organizers promised that she would compete with a team of American women in another race in Athens, but she did not take part in that race either. [Tarasouleas, "Stamata Revithi, "Alias Melpomeni", 54; Tarasouleas, "The Female Spiridon Loues", 12]

At 8:00 the following day, Revithi ran the marathon course on her own. Before beginning to run, she had the town's only teacher, the mayor, and the city magistrate sign a statement testifying to the time she departed from the village. She ran the race at a steady pace and reached Parapigmata (the place where the Evangelismos Hospital stands today, near the Hilton Athens) at 13:30 (5½ hours). [Martin–Gynn, "Running through the Ages", 22; Tarasouleas, "Stamata Revithi, "Alias Melpomeni", 55; Tarasouleas, "The Female Spiridon Loues", 12. However, some of the authors who believe that "Melpomene" and Revithi are the same person attribute to the latter the more favorable time of 4½ hours. E.g. Miragaya, "The Female Olympian", 314, who cites cite conference |first=A. |last=DeFrantz |title=The Changing Role of Women in the Olympic Games |booktitle=37th International Session for Young Participants – IOA Report |pages= |publisher=International Olympic Academy |date=1997 |location=Ancient Olympia |url= |accessdate= |id=] There she met a few Greek military officers whom she asked to sign her handwritten report to certify her time of arrival in Athens. [Tarasouleas, "Stamata Revithi, "Alias Melpomeni", 54] She stated to the reporters that she wanted to meet Timoleon Philimon (the General-Secretary of the Hellenic Olympic Committee) to present her case. Historians believe that she intended to present her documents to the Hellenic Olympic Committee, in the hopes that they would recognize her achievement. Neither her reports nor documents from the Hellenic Olympic Committee have been discovered to provide corroboration.Martin–Gynn, "Running through the Ages", 22]

Aftermath

There is no account of Revithi's life after running the marathon. Although some newspapers printed articles about her story in the buildup to the marathon, these reports never followed up on her life after the race. It is not known whether she met Philimon or if she found a job. [Eleftheratos, [http://www.e-tipos.com/content/staticfiles/issues/2008/04/12/Review/review_46%2031.pdf April 11, 1896] (PDF); Martin–Gynn, "Running through the Ages", 21–22; Tarasouleas, "The Female Spiridon Loues", 11] As Tarasouleas stated, "Stamata Revithi was lost in the dust of history". [Tarasouleas, "The Female Spiridon Loues", 12] Violet Piercy, of the United Kingdom, was the first woman to be officially timed in the marathon, when she clocked a time of 3 hours and 40 seconds in a British race on October 3, 1926. [Lovett, [http://www.marathonguide.com/history/olympicmarathons/chapter25.cfm The Fight to Establish The Women's Race] ] Women were finally allowed to run the Olympic marathon at the 1984 Summer Olympics, when American Joan Benoit, won the inaugural race in a time of 2 hours and 24 seconds. [ [http://www.olympic.org/uk/athletes/profiles/bio_uk.asp?PAR_I_ID=30344 Joan Benoit] , IOC]

Melpomene

[
Muse.] In March 1896, a French-language newspaper in Athens (the "Messager d' Athènes") reported that "there was talk of a woman who had enrolled as a participant in the Marathon race. In the test run which she completed on her own [...] she took 4½ hours to run the distance of 42 kilometers which separates Marathon from Athens."Martin–Gynn, "Running through the Ages", 20] Later that year, Franz Kémény, a founding IOC member from Hungary, wrote in German that, "indeed a lady, Miss Melpomene, completed the 40 kilometers ["sic"] marathon in 4½ hours and requested an entry into the Olympic Games competition. This was reportedly denied by the commission."Martin–Gynn, "Running through the Ages", 21] According to David Martin and Roger Gynn, "a peculiarity here is why there is no first name for Melpomene". The "Messager" report faded into obscurity for about 30 years before it was revived in 1927 in an issue of "Der Leichtathlet".Tamini, "Women always in the Race", 206]

Olympic historian Karl Lennartz asserts that two women ran the marathon in 1896, and that the name "Melpomene" is confirmed by both Kémény and Alfréd Hajós, two-time Olympic swim champion of 1896. [However, Hajós confuses the race at the beginning of March with the one April 11, about which Tarasouleas reports (Lennartz [1997] , 20).] Lennartz presents the following accounts of events: a young woman named Melpomene wanted to run the race, and completed the distance in 4½ hours at the end of February or the beginning of March. The organizing committee did not allow her, however, to run, and the newspaper "Akropolis" criticized the committee for its decision. [Hungarian sporthistorian Eva Fóldes, "Women at the Olympics", 105-114, gives a similar account of Melpomene's story.] The Olympic Marathon took place on April 10 smaller| [O.S. March 29] 1896, but another female runner, Stamata Revithi, took 5½ hours to run the course on April 11 smaller| [O.S. March 30] 1896. The newspapers "Asti", "New Aristophanes" and "Atlantida" reported this on April 12 smaller| [O.S. March 31] 1896. [Lennartz (1997), 20. For a similar account of events, see Jenkins, "Sports Science Handbook ", 314; Lovett, [http://www.marathonguide.com/history/olympicmarathons/chapter25.cfm The Fight to Establish The Women's Race] ; Mallon–Widlund, "The 1896 Olympic Games", 14. Luψas ("A History of the Marathon Race", 132) refers to "Melpomene" and her time (4½ hours) but not to Revithi.]

On the other hand, Tarasouleas argues that no contemporary press reports in Greek newspapers mention Melpomene by name, while the name Revithi appears many times; [Tarasouleas, "Stamata Revithi, "Alias Melpomeni", 55. Martin and Gynn ("Running through the Ages", 22) assert that the name "Melpomene" was described in foreign reports many years later (in 1927, when "Der Leichtathlet" revived the Messenger's report).] Tarasouleas suggests that Melpomene and Revithi are the same person, and Martin and Green argue that "a contemporary account referring to Revithi as a well-known marathon could explain the earlier run by a woman over the marathon course—this was by Revithi herself, not Melpomene". [Martin–Gynn, "Running through the Ages", 22; Tarasouleas, "Stamata Revithi, "Alias Melpomeni", 55, quoting "Estia" of April 4 smaller| [O.S. March 23] , and "Asti" of April 11 smaller| [O.S. March 30] .] The daily Athens newspaper "Estia" of April 4 smaller| [O.S. March 23] 1896 refers to "the strange woman, who, having run a few days ago in the Marathon as a try-out, intends to compete the day after tomorrow. Today she came to our offices and said 'should my shoes hinder me, I will remove them on the way and continue barefoot'." Moreover, Tarasouleas notes that on March 13 smaller| [O.S. March 1] 1896, another local newspaper indicated that a woman and her baby had registered to run the Marathon, but again the name of that woman is not mentioned. Trying to resolve the mystery, Tarasouleas asserts that "perhaps Revithi had two names, or perhaps for reasons unknown she was attributed the name of the Muse Melpomene". [Tarasouleas, "Stamata Revithi, "Alias Melpomeni", 54–55. Miragaya ("The Female Olympian", 314) believes that after her marathon run, athletics officials could not remember Revithi's name so they labeled her "Melpomene", who is the Greek muse of tragedy. "Looking at Stamata Revithi, they could see only tragedy, not her extraordinary feat."]

Citations and notes

References

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*cite book |title=Women in Sport: Issues and Controversies|editor=Cohen, Greta L.|last=DeFrantz|first=A.|year=1993|publisher=Sage|isbn=0-803-94979-0|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=l9deAAAACAAJ&dq=Women+in+Sport:+Issues+and+Controversies&ei=e7DOSM7nGomkiwHK-K33Cw|chapter=The Olympic Games: Our Birthright to Sports
*cite book |title=Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World|last=Domosh|first=Mona|coauthors=Seager, Joni|year=2001|publisher=Guilford Press|isbn=1-572-30668-8|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=eG9H77-gB2wC&dq=Victorian+period,+women,+inferior,+men&as_brr=3&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0|chapter=Victorian Lady Travelers
*cite news |first=Dionysis |last=Eleftheratos |title= April 11, 1896|url=http://www.e-tipos.com/content/staticfiles/issues/2008/04/12/Review/review_46%2031.pdf |work=ET Review |format=PDF|publisher=Eleftheros Typos |date=April 12, 2008 |accessdate=2008-07-24|language=Greek
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*cite web |url=http://www.olympic.org/uk/athletes/profiles/bio_uk.asp?PAR_I_ID=30344 |title=Joan Benoit |accessdate=2008-09-16 |work=Profiles |publisher=International Olympic Committee
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*cite journal | last= Lucas| first=John A. | year = 1976 | title = A History of the Marathon Race | journal =Journal of Sport History| pages = 120–138 | volume=3|issue=2|format=PDF|url = http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1976/JSH0302/jsh0302d.pdf|accessdate=2008-09-16
*cite book |title=The 1896 Olympic Games|last=Mallon|first=Bill|coauthors=Widlund, Ture|year=1998|format=PDF|publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc.|location=Jefferson, North Carolina, and London|isbn=0-786-40379-9|chapter=1896 Olympic Games – Analysis and Summaries|url=http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/Mallon/1896.pdf
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*cite book |title=Running through the Ages|last=Martin|first=David E.|coauthors=Gynn, Roger W. H. |year=2000|publisher=Human Kinetics|isbn=0-880-11969-1|chapter=The Olympic Marathon|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Qb125O62NVQC&dq=Stamata+Revithi&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0
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*cite book |title=Different but Equal|last=Payne|first=Kay E.|year=2001|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=0-275-96522-8|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=W6XnfOyUX4YC&dq=Victorian+period,+women,+inferior,+men&as_brr=3&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0|chapter=Persuasive Attempts at Shaping Gender Roles
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